The Wanderer and the Way 2
The Face at the Gate
This is Chapter 2 of The Wanderer and the Way
The smallest change in a long-known way can disquiet the memory and make all strange. So it was for Theodemir as he walked the path that led to the villa where he had spent most of his youth and childhood. Was it because he was now on foot rather than horseback? Was it because in the three years that had passed, the trees that lined the road had grown a little taller? Was it that his mind, which had become accustomed to the cobbles and crowded streets and sewage reek of Rome, now saw as if anew this soft green way with the scent of flowers and a hint of the nearby river in the softness of the air? Certainly, the small encampment that came into view as the road came near to the Ulla had not been there when he left. He paused a moment to look at it, nestled on the bank of the river. There was a collection of small huts and a longer, higher building, not made after the fashion of this place. A number of young women were busy among the huts with the occupations of their sex. He could see three or four young children toddling about or running furiously with a strange rocking gait on the small legs. It took some moments of contemplation before the oddness of the scene resolved itself and he realized that there were no old women or women of middle age and no children old enough to have full possession of the voices or their limbs. Nor were there any old men. That the other men should be gone from the place in the middle of the day was no surprise, for they would be off laboring in the fields. But if any older man had been left to keep watch or offer council or mend disputes between the women, there was no sign of him. No, every woman he could see seemed in the bloom of youth, and every child barely out of the cradle, and he wondered if his uncle had recently opened a home for cast-off concubines. And if he had, should that be taken as a sign of repentance expressing itself in an appropriate form of reparation or of a more calculated form of vice than he had hitherto devised? But then he noticed that the women he could see were far more fair-complected and taller than was his uncle’s taste. Not his concubines then. Perhaps a hareem taken in war? But if so, for what purpose where they settled here rather than sold on like other spoils of war?
A child noticed him standing watching them, pointed at him, and let out a wail of fright. One of the women came running, snatched up the child, glared at him with fury and fear mixed in her face, and hurried away towards one of the huts, calling other children to her as she went. Was his aspect really so hideous as to put fright into the hearts of women and children? And why did they see in him a terrifying tramp where the old couple at the crossroads had seen a mendicant man of God? His uncle had a mirror of polished silver, and he wondered if he should ask for it and look at himself before he allowed any ablutions to be performed upon his person. Or perhaps it would be better to slough off this creature of the road, as a butterfly sloughs off its cocoon, without looking back to reflect on the ugliness and pain that would soon be put behind him. He turned and continued on painful feet towards his uncle’s door.
His sense of unfamiliarity in well-known things persisted even as he came to the gates of the villa compound. He pulled the strange but familiar bell pull and a strange but familiar bell sounded within. He had only to wait a moment before a face appeared in the iron grill in the small door that opened into the gatehouse. The face was not familiar, but neither could he call it strange. It was a youthful female face, and he immediately associated it with the village of young women that he had passed on the road. And yet this was not a face like to the faces of those tall, fair women. It had much more the cast of Iberian people who were native to this place long before the Romans or the Moors or the Visigoths came to Hispania. And yet it was not an Iberian face, but the face perhaps of some kindred race, with a lighter native complexion. But all of this was as nothing to the startling beauty of the face, a beauty which at once set it apart from the faces of all ordinary women, even those considered fairest among their sisters.
He asked himself at once how such a beauty could be, considering that beauty consisted simply in the perfection of form and that the arrangements of eyes, mouth, nose, chin, cheeks, and brow of a human female face must have some natural bound which would prescribe the limits of womanly beauty. But if that were so, it seemed, he had not made due allowance for the possibilities of their perfect arrangement, for any theory of their limits he might have formed in his long contemplation of the maidenly form was here shown to fall as far short in natural philosophy as the religion of the Moors fell short of the perfection of Christian doctrine.
“Qui quaerit intrare?” the woman asked.
The Latin she spoke was clearly not native to her tongue but learned, and recently so, for the shape of her consonants had been formed by a more Germanic tongue.
“Ego sum Theodemir.” He replied. “Haec domus patrui mei est.”
She looked him up and down with righteous suspicion. If his name meant anything to her, she would not have been taught to associate it with the filthy tramp that she saw before her but with a handsome soldier in good clothes and seated on a fine horse.
“My uncle has a scar on his right cheek that he got in battle with the Moors,” he said. “Curiously, it makes him seem most merry when his aspect is most grim. This is fortunate, for when he speaks an insult, as he is sometimes too quick to do, other men take it for a jest and laugh when they might otherwise wish to fight him.”
A frown passed over her face, though frowning did nothing to diminish her loveliness. He had clearly taxed the limits of her vocabulary, and he wondered if he should repeat the same words more slowly or attempt to speak to her in another tongue. Or perhaps there was a simpler proof of his identity that he could offer her.
“In pariete ad sinistram tuam invenies nomen meum in lapide exaratum,” he said, speaking the words slowly and distinctly. On the wall to your left, you will find my name scratched in the stone.
Her face disappeared from the grill for a moment, an eclipse of beauty that seemed to darken the day.
“Avunculus tuus domi non est,” she said when her face returned to the grill and the day recovered its brightness. Your uncle is not at home.
“Longum iter veni et requiem desidero,” he replied. I have come a long journey and I long for rest.
Her face disappeared from the grill once again and then he heard the bolt withdrawn from the gate that led into the courtyard.
“Intrate, salve.” She said, standing before him. The fear that had entered his heart that her form might not live up to the promise of her face was at once dispelled. She was a small woman, very neat in her figure, neither boyish nor grotesque, but womanly as any true philosophy of beauty must reckon the beauty of woman. In one respect only did she fall short of embodying the Platonic ideal of womanhood: she wore a light linen wimple that was bound tightly under he chin, and from the way it fell over her head and her shoulders, he could tell that underneath there was no great cascading mane of buoyant black locks such as he had in his mind attributed to her when only her face had been visible to him through the gate-house grill. Such a glory of hair she had certainly once possessed, for there was a symmetry in creation that forbade that any creature made as she was made should have her complection and perfection marred by any but the hand of sinful man, or perhaps by her own hand, which, it seemed apt to remind himself, might also be sinful.
As for the rest of her raiment, she was dressed in a simple undyed linen dress entirely without ornament, belted with a knotted string. He looked her up and down, aware of his concupiscence, allowing his eyes to rest a moment on the open sandals that rebuked the philosophers of beauty for their utter neglect of the subject of her feet. He then slowly raised his gaze again, relearning as he did so all the geometry of the female form before coming once again to her face. Her expression showed that she was aware of the examination he had conducted of her person, which she had patiently endured as one of life’s more tiresome occurrences.
“I knew a monk once who would not let himself look at me,” she said. “He would keep falling over his feet for not looking where he was going. I thought he was funny then. I wish I was in his company now.”
It was an astonishing thing for a servant to say, and for a moment he stared at her, nonplussed. Nothing about her dress suggested she had any right to speak so to him. And yet the set of her chin told a rather different story.
“Your pardon, lady,” he replied. “But I am no monk.”
It was her turn to look him up and down, though her inspection was much more curt and abbreviated than his inspection of her had been. If her curiosity had been aroused by his appearance, she did not express it. She seemed to catch herself looking into his face, in a way no servant ought to do, and lowered her eyes.
“Come and sit in the shade,” she said, “I will bring you refreshment.” There was nothing kindly or enticing in the way she said this, but rather the tone of a mother speaking to a dallying child while she was in a hurry to get home from the marketplace.
He followed her along a strange yet familiar path to a strange yet familiar chair that stood where it had always stood in the shade of a strange yet familiar veranda. He sat and looked across the gardens to the river which slid on lazily by the low grassy banks. This scene at last seemed to accord with his remembrance, without strangeness, and it was suddenly as if the years of his absence had vanished away and he had just returned from some jaunt with his old companions. All was suddenly as it had always been, except that his feet and his right hand throbbed from their injuries, and the insect bites on his neck created a terrible itching. But he was almost too weary to mind these discomforts, and he had half slipped into sleep before the Platonic ideal of loveliness returned with a laden tray in her hands, which she laid down on a bench nearby. She took a cup from the tray and brought it to him.
“An infusion of herbs with the juice of a lemon added,” she said. “It is kept in the cellars, so it is quite cool. Your uncle has acquired some Moorish sugar, which he prefers to add to the cup. But it is expensive, and I think it is more refreshing without.”
“You have tasted sugar, then?” he asked.
“I think honey does as well,” she replied.
He took the goblet from her and drained it. She was right, he thought. The bitter draft was more refreshing than a sweet one would have been. Had she been any other servant, he would have sent her away to fill the goblet again, but he had no desire that she should leave him, nor did he quite feel that she was his to command.
She went to the tray and returned with a bowl of water. She knelt on the ground before him and began to untie his sandals. The thongs parted, and the sandals seemed almost to fall apart in her hands as if they knew that their long and terrible journey was done and they were free now to pass into a peaceful retirement on the rubbish tip. She clearly thought the same of them, for she did not lay them neatly beside the chair but cast them towards the garden, where a large tabby cat came and sniffed them briefly before turning and walking away.
She began to wash his feet. Washing of feet in this household had always been a somewhat sensual affair, for his uncle trained his small brown girls to gently caress the feet of his guests and in particular to excite the soles of their feet with warm fingers. This was not her manner of performing these ablutions. She did her work quickly and firmly as if she had been washing up the plates after a meal or scrubbing something sticky from the hands of a small boy. And yet the touch of her hands, however brief and businesslike it might be, was a torture to him. He had so longed for the soft caresses of the small brown girls. Now he wanted those same caresses from her fingers. Yet he did not dare rebuke her for the roughness of her method.
When his feet were washed up to the knee, she threw the dirty water from the bowl onto the garden and placed the bowl back on the tray. She then returned with a pot of honey, which she dabbed into the cuts on his feet.
“You should not have walked so far in broken sandals,” she said. “Honey will help, but these cuts may still fester.”
“I had no purse to buy new sandals,” he said. “I am a mendicant.”
“You said you were not a monk,” she replied.
“I was a monk when I began,” he said. “I became less so with every weary mile. But still, I had no purse.”
“Show me your thumb,” she said.
He held out the hand where the splinter had entered far under the skin. The flesh around it was swollen and throbbing, which only placed the splinter further out of reach.
She brought forth a long, sharp sewing needle, which she had woven into the seam of her dress at the shoulder.
“Come into the light,” she said.
He stood to obey, but seeing that she meant to plunge the needle into his hand, he demurred, saying. “I had meant to see a surgeon.”
“A surgeon will want to take the hand off,” she said. “Give it to me.”
He held out his arm, and she took it and placed it under her left shoulder and over her elbow, bending the palm open with her left hand. She speared the needle into his aching flesh, following the path the splinter had taken. He gave a yelp of pain and tried to pull his arm away.
“I thought you were a soldier once,” she said. “Is all your courage gone?”
No servant she. He gritted his teeth and held his arm firm, determined that he would not flinch again should she drive the needle clear through his hand. She worked swiftly and with seemingly little care for the pain she was causing. This is my reward, he thought, for how I looked at her. But whether it was deliberate punishment or not, after a minute or so of digging in his flesh, she gave an exclamation of satisfaction and drew out the needle with the vicious splinter impaled upon its point. This was followed by a flow of puss, which she squeezed out with her thumb until the puss gave way to blood. She salved this wound with honey also.
“If I got it all out, the festering should abate,” she said. “Salve it again with honey each time it wears off. It helps the healing. You can sit down again, now.”
He sat obediently. But then he wondered at his own obedience, and he asked her, “Who are you that you order me about so, and that you make me so meekly obey you?”
“My name is Agnes,” she said, wiping his blood and puss off her hands.
It did not seem that she meant to elaborate further, for she lapsed into silence and went again to her tray and returned with a small jar from which a pungent scent of basil and olive oil emerged. This she used to salve the stings on his neck, which brought him immediate sweet relief. But now her fingers were gentle, not rough as they had been when they washed his feet or probed his wounded hand, and there was a sweetness in her touch that was as heady as the fragrance of basil that filled his nostrils. He knew that her newfound gentleness was simply because the salving of the flesh was not a task that could be performed roughly. It was not an indication that she was softening towards him. You have the aspect of a hideous tramp, he reminded himself. You should not expect to be charmed or courted by her in your present state. She does no more than fulfill her office as gatekeeper, caring for the needs of a weary traveler. A man in the same office would do the same, and you would read nothing into the touch of his hands.
Agnes was a fitting name for her, he thought. He had visited the tomb of St. Agnes on the Via Nomentana and had wondered at the reputed beauty of the saint who, wishing to be a nun, had refused so many suitors that in their fury they had dragged her to a whorehouse where they had attempted to rape her. But anyone who attempted to rape her was immediately struck blind. She was put on trial and sentenced to be burned to death. But the wood refused to burn, so a soldier had stabbed her to complete her execution. And he had thought, as he had stood by the tomb, what a beauty she must have been to inspire such lust and such disappointment, and thoughts of her beauty, rather than of her martyrdom, had occupied him as he had wended his way home through fetid streets to find his bed that night. As he was leaving Rome on his long walk, he had gone out of his way to return to the tomb and pray there for the forgiveness of the lascivious thoughts that had occupied him on his first visit. Was this second Agnes any but the first, come from the tomb to test and to rebuke him further?
“Who are you, Agnes?” he demanded again. “Who are you that you wait by my uncle’s gate and wash the feet of his guests like a servant or a slave, and yet you speak to me like an equal. Nay, you scold me as if I were a child.”
“Your pardon, sir,” she replied brusquely, dabbing her ointment on the last of his stings. “I did not mean to scold.”
“Nor did you fear to be beaten for it,” he said.
She cast her eyes down and returned to her tray, placing the pot of basil on it and stooping to pick up the tray and bear it away.
“Stay here, Agnes,” he said sternly. “Or tell me why I have no right to command you to do so.”
She put her tray down and turned to face him, crossing her arms across her bosom to deflect his gaze.
“I find you in my uncle’s villa, making free of his possessions,” he said, “but when I ask who you are and what your business might be here, you give me no answer. What am I to think? Who are you?”
“My name is Agnes,” she said.
“You are a nobleman’s daughter,” he said, “or you would not look at me with such defiance. And you have not been taken in war and made a slave, or the defiance would have been beaten out of you.”
“I am a postulant of the Abbey of St. Hilda of Whitby,” she said, still glowering defiantly at him.
“And where is that?” he asked.
“Northumbria,” she said.
“Well, I might believe that,” he said. “Your complexion is northern, and your speech is Germanic. But you are not Saxon, surely?”
“I am part Anglish, part Welisc,” she said. “But I take after my Welisc kin.”
“And the Welsic are kin to the Iberian people?” he asked.
“It seems so,” she said. “They have something of our look, though our language seems lost here.”
“But this does not explain why you are answering my uncle’s door and washing his guest’s feet.”
“I am apprenticed to Sister Leofrun, the gatekeeper of the abbey. I am to take her place one day. I practice my duties when I can.”
Suddenly he was angry. Her defiance was unseemly enough, and now he was sure that she was making game of him. He was minded to seize her and carry her off to his old chamber and to throw her down and strip her and teach her to know her place.
“I will go now,” she said, glowering at him as if she had read his intent in his face. “Your uncle will return before nightfall. There is water and oil in the lavatorium if you want to wash. If you call for Fatima, she will attend you.”
She picked up her tray and was gone before he could decide if he should pursue her and master her or fall at her feet and beg her pardon.
He fell back into the chair and stared moodily across the gardens to the river, thinking of Agnes. After several minutes in which he alternated between lustful fury and wistful pining, he called aloud, “Fatima!” And when there was no immediate response to his call, he bellowed out with all the force of his lungs, “Fatima! Come to me at once, wench, or I will have you beaten!”
There was a scurrying of bare feet on warm flagstones, and in a moment a small brown girl stood before him with lowered gaze.
Comments welcome. If you spot a mistake, please let me know by replying to this email or by sending an email to author@gmbaker.net. Thanks!