Chapter 4 #3
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said in a voice that came out in small yelps.
“I’m afraid I’ve flipped out.” As soon as I said those words, I tried to swallow them back down my throat.
Jean closed the satchel that hung off the saddle and walked over to me.
“Come sit with me,” he said. He also had a faint odor of sweat about him, but it was pleasant, with a dash of rose water and perhaps lemon.
Brunette sprawled at our feet, eyed me for a moment, and then let her head sink down between her outstretched paws.
“I understand your distress, Lady édith,” Jean said in a practical tone.
“Let us examine your predicament logically.” A neurotic squeal of laughter escaped me, and my face again contorted into weeping.
I let my head slump between my knees. “Fine,” I said, in the general direction of my thighs.
A warm, dry palm stroked my back. I straightened up. Jean smiled at me.
“Let us suppose this is indeed a dream,” he said, his eyes merry.
“Perchance, it is even a hallucination, but this is no nightmare. Am I mistaken? There are no evil monsters begging to devour you. Au contraire—there is someone who is ready and able to defend you.” I looked at him doubtfully and turned his words over in my mind.
“That’s true. It’s a powerful trip, but not necessarily a bad one,” I muttered.
“Ah … excusez-moi? What is powerful, but not bad?” Jean asked.
“The dream,” I replied. “You’re right. And perhaps I really am a kind of fairy. Perhaps I really did come from another world.” He smiled at me. “Voilà, you’re having an adventure. So am I. And Thibaut of Champagne will have a beauteous new chanson. Is that so terrible?”
I shrugged my shoulders, still disturbed.
“But everything is so real …” I said, in spite of his words. “And my husband, he came with me, and I don’t know where he is now. He may be worried.” I bit my lip and looked at Jean, momentarily flustered. He chuckled and said, “So, your servant is, in fact, your husband?”
“Yes,” I answered with a nervous laugh. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Jean nodded and chuckled again. “That is a most precise description of a faithful husband,” he said and rose to his feet. He held his hand out, and I stood up. “Shall we search for the good nobleman?” I nodded.
We began walking briskly southward, and I looked around with greater ease.
Brunette ran circles around us, panting enthusiastically.
My eyes returned constantly to the fortress.
I was trying to work out whether there was an emblem on the flags that fluttered there.
The thought that this might be a pleasant dream, however overpowering or shocking, calmed me down.
I wondered if I might be able to fly, but I decided not to try my luck.
“Is it true, what Thibaut said back there?” I asked. Jean looked at me quizzically but kept walking.
“About your wife and children,” I added.
“Indeed,” Jean smiled. “I am wedded to Lady Alice, and with the grace of God we have been blessed with two children, Balian and little Jean, and my wife is presently with child.”
Brunette barked.
“Hmm,” I responded. “You definitely don’t look like a married man with kids. Nor do you look like the kind of person who says, ‘with the grace of God.’”
Jean roared with laughter. My smile was guarded, wondering what he found so funny. We were already nearing the Narrow Passage, which appeared to be in much better shape than the worn pathway I knew. Jean softly whistled the tune Thibaut had played earlier. Halimi was nowhere to be found.
“This is unreal,” I muttered to myself in Hebrew.
Jean looked at me with intense curiosity.
By this time, the sun had sunk down almost as far as the sea. I was appalled to think I might be stuck here for the night. I couldn’t entertain the possibility of getting stuck here forever. I felt as if I were doing a connect-the-dot puzzle, half-blinded and held upside down.
“My lady is in distress again,” Jean said.
“I don’t know how to get home,” I said, and tears started running down my cheeks.
“Prithee, tell me how you arrived here,” Jean said. The way he spoke reminded me of the tone I used when trying to calm Lily in the middle of a temper tantrum. “Perhaps we might solve this mystery together.”
We began retracing our steps, and I cast a final glance at what was supposed to be Atlit but looked more like a swamp. I could almost see the greenish vapors rising up from it. Brunette ran as far as the Narrow Passage and then returned to us.
“Just tell me first,” I said, my heart pounding, terrified of the answer. “What’s the date today?”
“What do you mean?” Jean wrinkled his brow.
“What year is this?” I asked impatiently.
He gave me a hard stare, a glimmer of suspicion in his eyes. “It is the twelfth year of the reign of Conrad the Second of Jerusalem,” Jean said slowly, gauging my reaction. “The last week of April. Yesterday, we commemorated St. George’s Day.”
“But … but …” I tried to express myself, but the words shattered in my mouth. “What year is”—and suddenly, it hit me. “How long ago was Jesus born?” I almost shouted. Jean nodded his head thoughtfully and said in a serious tone, “This is the year 1240 after the birth of our Savior.”
Every single hair on my body stood up. I felt weak at the knees. I recalled the strange feeling I had had as I locked the door to the house that same morning. The date hammered the unbelievable into my brain.
“Speak, my lady,” Jean said. Without threatening or intimidating, he was nonetheless demanding answers. “From whence did you come, and how did you get here?”
“You’ll never believe me …” I said bitterly.
“Try me,” Jean answered.
“Okay, so …” I began. “This morning, we sent our daughter to go stay with her grandparents.” Jean frowned but said nothing.
“We ate, showered, we watched a bit of TV, fell asleep …” I saw he was opening his mouth to ask something, but I waved my hand to cut him short.
“Never mind. We fell asleep and then woke up. And then we ate magic mushrooms. Do you know what they are?”
“Are you referring to fly mushrooms? Of the fairy circles? The red ones with the white dots?” Jean asked with gravity.
“Something like that, yes.”
“Did you eat them on purpose? For the love of God, why?” He looked at me as if I were deranged.
“Sometimes, we like to extend the boundaries of our consciousness,” I said with a sense of self-importance. “Like you and your hashish.”
“Hashish affords me tranquility and blurs the edges a little,” Jean said, still wary. “Those mushrooms drive people mad.”
“But this wasn’t our first time!” I said defiantly. “And everything was fine. We’re not novices.”
“I see,” Jean said, still patient. “And then what happened?”
“We left the house and …” I recalled the feeling I had had as I locked the front door, and I swallowed another lump of erupting anxiety. “We were heading out to the ruins.”
“What ruins?” Jean asked.
“In my time, this place is just a ruin, a pile of stones,” I said.
“Your time … do you believe you came from another time?” Jean asked haltingly.
“I know I did,” I said. I heard the stubborn petulance in my voice and almost burst into tears again. Brunette rested her snout on my thigh. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” I added in the steadiest tone I could muster. Jean nodded his head, but his gaze was directed toward the sunset.
“Never mind,” I said and continued—more for myself than for Jean.
“We walked out of the neighborhood, over there”—I waved toward the south—“and we watched a flock of flamingos landing by the salt pools, and then we crossed the Narrow Passage and, after a while, sat down under one of those trees.” And now I pointed north.
“Trees that one day will be there,” I added, after a moment of reflection.
Jean said nothing, just looked out, eyes trained on the direction in which I pointed.
“My husband lay down, which was unusual; he even closed his eyes, which was even more unusual, but I decided to keep walking. I heard strange music, like a distant guitar, and voices singing …”
I stopped speaking and contemplated it all over again.
Was it Thibaut I’d heard playing the lute in my own time?
I ran my fingers through my hair and continued.
“I began thinking something was up, and then I smelled your hashish. I drew closer and saw you both, but neither of you noticed me. I went to drink from the spring—I’d never seen it before—and then there was a kind of explosion in my brain, and I felt as if I were drowning, and I fell backward.
And when I opened my eyes, you were leaning over me. ”
Jean was speechless. I scratched my forehead and rubbed my nose.
“It’s as if I’m describing a dream to a character in that very dream,” I said.
He chuckled and looked at me appreciatively, as if I’d just said something truly clever.
I felt an enormous sense of weakness. If I’d been alone, I would have curled up on the ground and closed my eyes.
Perhaps if I fall asleep, I might wake up in my own time, I thought.
I fantasized about taking a shower, changing my tampon and my sweaty clothes, removing my contacts.
I fingered the coin dreamily between my fingers.
It was getting chilly, but the coin around my neck remained warm. Almost hot.
“Did you really throw a coin like this into the spring a few minutes before I appeared?” I asked Jean.
He glanced at the coin, then took hold of it, and the necklace pulled tight against my neck; I felt a strange vibration.
“Precisement,” he replied. “This is a coin from Beirut, minted by my noble father, may his soul rest in peace. I suggest you remove it from your person if you do not want to attract unnecessary attention. Not everyone here is a devoted follower of the house of Ibelin, and a copper dinar is an extraordinary ornament in these parts.”