A Stolen Tongue Read Online Free Page A

eyebrow.
    â€œI would never cross the desert.” A Homesick shakes his head. “Satyrs and Fauns live there.”
    â€œThe sea is bad enough, with its sharks and Troyp,” adds another.
    I kneel beside the merchant, who grows more pale by the minute.
    â€œDon’t listen to them.” I throw my arm about his shoulder, knowing, myself, the irrational fears that accompany any new voyage. “You’ll survive.”
    The merchant’s face is close to mine, clammy and green. He lets his cap string drop from his mouth.
    â€œNone of it matters.” He sighs, collecting himself at last. “If I am to ride in the drowned man’s spot, I am already dead.”

What a Pilgrim Should Be on His Guard Against While on a Journey at Sea
    â€œJohn, wake up.” I push my friend, and he rolls over onto his stomach.
    Katherine came to me in a dream. She swam frantically behind the ship, her wet hair matted to her cheek.
Husband!
she cried, treading water. Between her teeth she held a wedding ring. Then she stretched out her left hand, imploringly. It was a bloody stump.
    â€œJohn? Are you awake?”
    How can he sleep, oblivious to the pitching boat and groaning boards, the burning lanterns that keep night from ever truly falling here? A rat gallops between us with a mouse locked between its jaws.
    I have barely closed my eyes all night. The Greek merchant, Constantine Kallistos as he identified himself, kept me up for hours with his womanly puking and odiferous unfamiliarity. Schmidhans reeked of stale beer and mutton, but it was a German reek, suspended in the national fat like ambergris. This man smells like I don’t know what. Octopus? Vinegar? There’s a sharp aroma that clings to him as if he’s rolled in a field of onions.
    O my brothers, how unquiet is the sleep of pilgrims aboard ship! As if sour, recycled smells weren’t bad enough, I have witnessed whole parties of pilgrims fall upon one another with swords in a dispute over whose mattress is overlapping whose chalk line. I have seen men hurl full chamber pots at burning lanterns to extinguish them. I have heard noble knights cry like little children and call out for their mothers, only to blush in the morning at their comrades’merciless ribbing. Fleas and lice breed in our sweat; rats and mice fall onto our faces from the beams above. For a monk used to the privacy of his own cell, nighttime aboard ship is a new circle of Hell.
    â€œJohn.” I push him a little harder this time. “Shall we go up on deck for some fresh air?”
    My friend covers his head with his pillow.
    â€œThat’s a yes? You’d like to come?”
    Nothing.
    â€œI’ll meet you up there, then.”
    While I pick my way upstairs, let me give you some advice, brothers, on what a pilgrim should guard against while moving about at sea.
    First: Let the pilgrim go up and down these steep ladderlike steps with due deliberation. Twice I have made haste, and both times I have fallen, so that it is a wonder I was not dashed to pieces.
    Second: Let him beware of carrying a light on deck at night, no matter how convenient it would make things, for the galley slaves dislike this strangely, being by nature superstitious, credulous creatures, and will not endure it.
    Third: Endeavor not to wake these same wretched creatures, who burrow their lousy heads into their neighbors’ bellies and squirm for position on their narrow wood benches, for they are also a quarrelsome, untrustworthy, easily angered lot, culled mostly from the captured peoples of Eastern Europe: Albania, Sclavonia, Macedonia. Among the slaves you will also find Bashi Bazouks, Christian apostates who fought for the Turks; Jews, Saracens, Schismatic Greeks, and Sodomites. You will never, though, meet a German galley slave, because no German could withstand such misery.
    Fourth: Let the pilgrim not trust any ropes without pulling on them first to make sure they will not