Chapter Text
Yusuf was, in truth, unsure of his true intent with his steady pace westwards. Had he been asked for the logic behind it by some curious passerby, he would not have been able to answer, but there was within him some mewling thing that begged for his mother’s embrace, and though he might not have been able to hear it with his ears, his heart could, and set his orientation for him.
Not that he would have been asked, since the only other person he saw was his silent Frankish companion. Even if they had been able to converse, Yusuf would not have wanted to.
For years he had dreamt of his One, his bringer of Colour, the other half of his soul, and to have it be some filthy savage invader felt like some sort of divine mockery. God was good, God was merciful, God tested all, but this could not have been an act of God in the slightest.
“Why do you plague me with this man?” he demanded one night, speaking to the stars in a fit of desperation. He should have known better to question the unknowable greatness of God, but he could not help it. He was so very lost in this new, unkillable existence, and lost in this Frank’s glass-like eyes.
The silence weighed on him, heavy, like he had been buried under it, sand between his teeth. Yusuf had never been a quiet man, thus the silence of the wilderness, of God and of the man beside him left too much room for his thoughts to clang together, like a housewife banging pots, or the infernal din of Nazarene bells.
Of course, there was not only silence. Whenever they halted for any reason the man would fall to his knees and pray, a constant, obnoxious drone that drove itself like an iron nail into Yusuf’s skull, incessant like the hum of the wind, none of the lilt and rhythm and melody of his own prayers. In retaliation, Yusuf would do his best to observe all five prayers with a fervour he had never truly shown before, performing tayammum for the lack of water, and in his heart he would ask why this, why him, why him, and receive no answer.
They passed signs that others had been there before them: the debris and refuse of a marching army, things lost in the haste of flight from a fallen city. Each well was poisoned far out into the countryside – Yusuf remembered being sent to do some of the work himself – but there were abandoned costrels, small but useful, which Yusuf gathered, and he didn’t even care that a few smelt of rotten wine within. The Frank eyed him warily, but did the same. There would be water eventually.
The same could not be said for trees, another labour Yusuf remembered dealing with. The mountains around al-Quds were bare, all the wood denied to the invaders. And what good it had done them! Ships dismantled and siege weapons still raised, the city gone. Yusuf thought of the man trudging beside him and seethed.
The Frank had not killed him since Yusuf offered his hand and it was taken, but the animosity remained. The Frank continued to look at Yusuf with distrust, and occasionally open contempt, and Yusuf could not deny that it stung. His father had told him, with deep fondness in his voice, of seeing his wife’s eyes for the first time, by chance, and how he had been struck by lightning, fixed in place by breathless wonder. Yusuf had dreamt of that.
But he also knew he looked at the Frank with much the same bitterness and loathing, hating these strings that tied them, chokingly, together. And yet, the fear of being alone in this world, without the only man who shared his supposed gift, was greater than any enmity. But he could not stand the silence any longer. He had a limit, an overloaded camel, and the idea of spending the rest of eternity saddled with this silent, resentful Nazarene with the glass-like eyes would have driven him mad. He should at least know this infernal man’s name.
(And there were the dreams, of course: flashes in new, vivid colour (when all his prior dreams had been naught but grey) of two extraordinary women, beautiful and wild, who fought like demonesses and loved with equal potency. He could not begin to fathom what they meant.)
They found shade, with an old shepherds’ well, overlooked in its hidden gully, and nothing to eat (which did not help Yusuf’s cantankerous mood at all), but the water was the sweetest he’d ever tasted. As he filled his skins, he glared at the Frank, whose responding glare held a hint of puzzlement.
Yusuf tapped his own chest. “Yusuf,” he said, and held his hand out, palm up, to the Frank.
The Frank eyed it, slowly looking from Yusuf’s hand to his face. For a moment Yusuf thought the Frank might be a simpleton, and not have understood, but then he touched two fingers to his own chest.
“Nicolò,” he replied, with a voice hoarse from disuse.
It was a start.
Knowing the Saracen’s name soothed none of Nicolò’s pain or doubts. His devil had a name and little good did it do him, especially because its offering led to a new deluge of chatter.
Nicolò was quiet by nature, and the silence of the place, the wilderness, the place his Lord Himself had meditated in, was soothing to his aching, ragged soul. It seemed that Yusuf was not the same as him, in that sense.
Will someone not rid me of this noisome Moor? he thought, but then he was struck by a sudden fear. He did not want to be alone. Already he was condemned to this life without death, to face it alone would be maddening beyond imagination.
And there was also the matter of Colour.
Throughout his life, Nicolò had been convinced it was a sin, albeit an unintentional one: the Holy Church discouraged it in its clergy, but if a layman met his Soulmate’s eyes and thus saw the world in colour, it was not truly his fault, despite some scholars stating it was the work of the Devil. There were pagan tales, still told by old wives out of earshot of men of the cloth, of it being the gift of Venus, a sign from the Goddess of Love that the other half of one’s soul had been found. Most people would wed their Soulmates, and Nicolò had heard enough gossip (unintentionally, of course, for a priest should not listen to idle rumour) of political unions scuppered by colour newly revealed. Maidens sighed at night over the colour of their future husband’s gaze, men boasted over the brightness of their wives’ eyes, old maids grew bitter at never having had it. These were all frivolities Nicolò had avoided. He had thought, somehow, that he was not giving in to temptation, in avoiding the eyes of his parishioners and fellow churchmen.
It turned out his Soulmate was just on the other side of the sea, and wore unholy guise.
And yet… Yusuf had not raised a blade against Nicolò since that day he held out his hand and some weary madness possessed Nicolò to take it. He shared what he found freely, though with gritted teeth, and had even offered his name. All Nicolò’s unwavering certainties were being unwound like frayed cloth. This was supposed to be a heathen, a defiler of the Holy Land, a murderer and torturer of his fellow Christians, a worshipper of things pagan and demonic.
He had no idea what to think, anymore. Praying in this place, the Holy Land, the place Christ set His own feet, surely should have come with a clarity that Nicolò had longed for for so long, guidance he so sorely needed. None came.
(And then there were the demons in his dreams, those that took the form of strange women, who rode horses across great grassy plains and fought with sword and bow and laughed, carefree and wanton, and he awoke every morning wondering why God was sending him these visions.)
In any case, Yusuf was far more inclined to talk now, and Nicolò had no choice but to listen. He would speak in the Saracen tongue, something lilting and rhythmic that, even to Nicolò’s untrained ear, appeared to rhyme. Poetry? Or chants to Termagant or the Devil? Nicolò knew not.
It grew cold in the wilderness at night, cold enough that Nicolò wished deeply for a cloak, and only once did Yusuf risk a fire, when they found sufficient cover to hide them from prying eyes. Bandits, perhaps, or roving bands of Saracens. Or, he thought bitterly, pilgrims. They had seen them, the dust kicked by their horses, and narrowly avoided them. They found a dead Saracen, arrows in his back, trampled by vicious hooves, and the sight of him told Nicolò his fate plain enough: the fact he kept the company of a Saracen would be condemnation enough, should they be found. They would both be killed without remorse, and their curse of undying revealed. They had to keep far from the roads, and stay as hidden as possible when they walked.
It seemed, however, that Yusuf was cold enough to deem it a necessity, that night. He scrounged twigs and dried grasses (though in truth everything was dry, in this place) and coaxed a fire into existence. It would not last long, so Nicolò shifted closer, holding his hands to it, attempting to draw as much warmth into himself as possible before he fell into a tight-stomached, fitful slumber.
“Omilis tin ellinikin?” Yusuf asked suddenly.
Nicolò tilted his head. The accent was different to that he had been taught (and he wondered, vaguely, if that was a lacuna in Father Giambono’s own education) but he understood well enough. If they were destined for this, then they should at least be able to speak.
"Omilo tin,” he replied. Yusuf seemed surprised at that, his eyebrows rising high enough that even in the flickering light of the feeble fire Nicolò could see it, but he nodded.
It felt like the slightest parting of clouds after a storm.
To crest a hill and see a town felt like a blessing. To see what had become of the town was an ugly reminder of the world around them.
It had been abandoned. Not a living thing remained but the lizards and the scorpions, and Yusuf knew the cause. It set something vicious and bitter to writhe within him, and rightly so: these people had fled, fearful of the barbarian invaders, and here he was, travelling with one, tied to him by too many choking threads he could not seem to cut.
All thoughts of hatred vanished when they saw the well. There was a bucket, discarded by its side, still attached to its rope. Yusuf peered over the stony edge of it, into its depths, and all he could see was the outline of his own head against the sky.
Nicolò, beside him, picked up the bucket and threw it in, dragging it back up. They stared at its contents uncertainly.
It was Nicolò who drank first. Yusuf did not know why he protested as the man foolishly tipped the water to his lips, but he did, crying out and attempting to wrestle it away.
The bucket fell between them, and Nicolò wiped his mouth, eyeing Yusuf with fiery defiance in those pale eyes.
They waited under the baking sun, staring at each other.
“Well?” Yusuf asked. Nicolò frowned, and shook his head.
“Safe,” he said. He picked up the bucket and dropped it in again, and this time, when it returned to the mouth of the well, he held it out to Yusuf.
Yusuf drank. He drank deep and long, whimpering at the cool feeling on his dry throat and lips. He’d never tasted anything so divine in his life. Lives. He dipped his hands in, pooling the liquid, and buried his face in it, scrubbing it down with a long, relieved sigh.
He caught Nicolò’s gaze, and the other man looked away, quickly, as if he had been caught at something forbidden. The silence lengthened, tense as the string of an oud, and it prickled unpleasantly along Yusuf’s spine. He dipped his fingers into the water and flicked them at Nicolò’s face.
“You should wash,” he said, haughty in a way only this Frankish lout was able to bring out in him. “You stink.”
Nicolò scowled, and Yusuf knew he was a horrible hypocrite, because when had he himself last been able to clean himself? But that did not matter. The moment of tension was broken, and Yusuf could breathe again.
Their clothes were tatters, what armour they had had long-since discarded, lost to the stony ground at their backs, somewhere between al-Quds and this nameless village. Yusuf inspected the holes in his garments, the shreds torn by blade and many days of neglect in the wild, and sighed.
Nicolò did not stray far from him, he noted, as he went from house to house to see what he could find. He felt somewhat like a thief, raiding each dwelling like some pillaging barbarian. Like a… He stilled as he went through a chest of linens, and swallowed.
He felt a surge of hate once more, something cloying up the back of his throat. If Nicolò had not killed him, then… Then what? his mind supplied. He would have likely died from another hand, perhaps a worse hand.
He glanced behind himself, at Nicolò, and saw him knelt, something held in his hands: a simple toy, a crudely sewn cat with dried seeds for eyes, forgotten by a child in the rush to flee. He watched, keeping his breath quiet, as Nicolò rose and set the soft little thing upon the shelf inset in the wall, arraying it so it sat neatly, and patted its head.
Yusuf took a breath. He should feel anger. He should feel anger that this invader, this beast, showed more mercy and care to an object than people. And yet he could not bring himself to. He could only turn back to the chest and blink away traitorous tears.
At the end of their search, they settled in a house that still boasted a single lonely rug, and inspected their meagre bounty: enough clothes to split between themselves so as to be decent, and a single bag of flour, forgotten in haste and unlooted, that by some miracle did not yet smell rotten.
“Mashallah,” he murmured. A small blessing. God could still be merciful.
Nicolò hated this place. Its emptiness was eerie, and residues of fear seemed to linger in its corners. He realised quite quickly why that was; even though he had never set foot in this place before, never even imagined it in his wildest dreams, it was still a place he had somehow tainted. The fear was set here by his fellow pilgrims, fear of the sword, fear of rape and pillage. It left bitterness on Nicolò’s tongue, and the cold grease-film of shame on his skin.
He followed Yusuf like a shadow, until the man carried the bucket to the house they had decided to occupy. He unwrapped the long length of fabric from his head, revealing a head of thick, long curls, loosened his belt and began to strip.
Nicolò stared. His eyes refused to close, or to tear themselves from the sight of bare skin being revealed. Skin unmarked and unblemished, skin that made Nicolò’s fingers tremble.
Something in him, in the pit of his stomach, hissed like a snake. Desire, fanged and venomous. A desire he thought he had finally managed to carve from himself through devotion to a higher cause. He had been free from Colour, but not free from the basest of temptations.
He stumbled from the house, back into the sun, his face aflame. He ignored Yusuf’s voice, perhaps calling after him, and he hurried down the dusty road, his feet catching on themselves, his throat and tongue thick and his heart pounding.
He did not stop until he was in the cliffs around the village, wheezing from exertion. He fell to his knees, crossing himself, and clasped his hands together, willing them to stop shaking.
“O Lord, you forsake me in my time of need,” he babbled, his Latin clumsy in his desperation. “I require strength as I have never required before, and I have none. If this is a test, I am sure to fail it, and fall from your grace, undeserving and sinful. Please lend me strength. Please.”
His prayers fell into the easy and familiar, over and over, more and more desperate. Tears dripped from his cheeks to the ground, sizzling in the heat, his head spun from the sun, his knees ached, and still God ignored him.
He pitched forward, prostrating himself, sobbing his prayers into the ground, his arms tight to his chest. He prayed and prayed, and yet even as he begged for forgiveness and deliverance from temptation, God was nowhere on his mind. His mind was full of bared skin and thick curls, and eyes that haunted him, that seared into him, and everything in colour. Vivid, riotous, delirious Colour.
Perhaps, he thought dementedly, he could blind himself. He could tear out his own eyes and never have to see such temptation again, et si oculus tuus scandalizat te erue eum et proice abs te. Futile, of course, his eyes would simply heal. Perhaps a blindfold, then, forevermore, a world made soothingly, eternally dark in the place of humble, pious grey.
But then… would Yusuf’s voice not still exist? Would he perhaps touch him, then, lead him in his blindness? The thought made Nicolò ache more, ache harder, throbbing inside and out, and his chanted prayers turned to simple, wordless sobs.
He did not want to be blind. The thought was repulsive. He wanted to see. He wanted to see a thousand brilliant sunsets, and a thousand snow-capped mountains, and a thousand towering trees, and the sea! The wide, beautiful sea that he had loved since childhood!
And Yusuf. Yusuf’s skin and hair and hands and beard and nose and lips. And Yusuf’s eyes, perhaps watching him with a warmth of which he knew he was not worthy, and might never be.
He curled further in on himself, his sobs fragmenting into shards of glass in his throat, and thoughts of God gave way again to thoughts of Yusuf, a softer Yusuf than he deserved to know. Had this infidel bewitched him with dark, pagan spells, to command such desire? Somehow, in the pit of him where Nicolò rarely ventured willingly, he knew it was not so.
He did not know how long he lay there, but the sun was halfway to set by the time he rolled over, onto his back, and stared at the cloudless sky. His breathing was ragged, every inch of him felt burnt, and he was both thirsty and hungry again.
God had not replied. He did not think He would, now. Was he to every day be torn asunder and pieced together again anew in ways he could not recognise? All certainty was gone, and he was tired of it. He almost laughed at the lunacy of it all.
Would Yusuf be worried about him, he wondered. Would he be pacing, or come searching? He was torn in twain, caught between wanting that and abhorring the very idea. He whined in frustration at his own confusion.
Not far away, something squeaked, high-pitched like a marmot. He rolled over again, staying low, and blinked in surprise.
They were not unlike marmots, he supposed, but they were also different. Their faces reminded him more of small dogs, but they were round like fat rabbits. He watched them sun themselves in the afternoon sun, ignorant of him – perhaps on purpose. They thought him of little threat, and in truth Nicolò did not care to be seen as one. They provided a welcome distraction.
He wondered if they could be hunted like marmots. Would they taste similar? Perhaps he could ingratiate himself further to Yusuf by offering some meat.
Sorry, little friends, he thought, I shall be a threat after all.
He wandered back into the village some time later, carrying two of the peculiar marmots. When he appeared at the door, there was a glint of steel, and he froze. Dread seized his gut, the arresting fear of a return to trading deaths by each other’s hand. But then he met Yusuf’s eyes, and Yusuf lowered his curved sword, frowning.
“Where did you go?” he demanded.
Nicolò gestured to the south-east, where the rocky outcroppings were, and Yusuf then noticed his strange bounty.
“What is that?!” he cried, startling back. Nicolò blinked, and held up his prey.
“Ah, I think a… marmòtta?” He did not know the Greek, although, in truth, he was somewhat guessing, most of the time, at what Yusuf had to say.
Yusuf eyed them warily, leaning closer to inspect them. “I have never seen them before.”
“You do not know the animals of your homeland?” Nicolò asked.
Yusuf shot him a withering look. “I am not Palestinian,” he snapped. “I am from Ifriqiya. And I was not in the habit of wandering the wilds.”
“In any case, at least it is meat,” Nicolò said.
“I cannot eat that,” was Yusuf’s reply, and he sounded haughty.
“Why?”
Yusuf blinked at him. “It is likely forbidden.”
“Why would it be forbidden?”
Yusuf descended into mutterings Nicolò could not comprehend, pinching the bridge of his nose and gazing up at the ceiling in a universal call for strength from above.
“God forbids certain foods,” Yusuf said, explaining as if Nicolò were a particularly obtuse child. “And I doubt that has been killed properly, anyway.”
“I broke their necks,” Nicolò said. “They are delicate, like rabbits.”
Yusuf spread his palms as if that was explanation enough, leaving Nicolò none the wiser. He set the strange marmots on a low table in the corner of the room, and wondered what he could use to skin them. No doubt asking Yusuf for use of his dagger would be met with more rebuke.
In truth, his mind was only half on his task. Yusuf spoke of strange things, but the strangest thing of all was God. What god did he mean? Termagant? Something worse? He had no frame of reference other than what he had been taught of the infidel and the defiler, of course they would called their mockery of God by the same name. And yet…
He started when a bucket was dropped by his side, water sloshing over its rim and onto the baked clay floor.
“Wash!” Yusuf barked, pointing at it. “Then deal with your… rabbits.”
Nicolò looked at the bucket, swallowing. Even as Yusuf moved away, back to whatever he was doing, Nicolò could feel his presence like a burning fire. It was inescapable, it took up the whole room, made din where Nicolò would have preferred quiet even as Yusuf said nothing. And in turn his own body burnt, from the inside out, flames of humiliation, of shame, of sin. He could fight it, yes, but for how long?
In any case, his practical side won out. Being clean would be good, and make him feel less like some thing and more like a man again. He picked up the bucket and headed outside, to somewhere more private.
He washed with slow, methodical intent, deliberately thinking of nothing but the water, and how soothing it felt on hot, filthy skin. Dried blood and dirt sloughed off him, running to the earth around him, until at last he tipped the bucket over his head, shaking himself like a dog would.
He stood there, for a long moment, eyes closed, slowly breathing. He nearly fell, catching himself against the wall of the house with a choked noise, when a throat was cleared behind him. He sharply turned, aware of his lack of weapon.
Yusuf, gaze averted, stood there, holding out a pile of linens.
“You forgot these,” he muttered. With slow, wary hands, Nicolò took them.
“Thank you,” he said. Yusuf immediately left, square-shouldered and feet unsure, and Nicolò could only stand there like a fool, holding the linens, a lump in his throat.
He dressed slowly, attempting to figure out the clothing as best he could. His own braies and undershirt were yellow and reeked beyond salvation, but there were replacements. Or, at least, there appeared to be. His hose were nearly worn through from his endless days of walking, and he could find nothing to tether them to on his new, longer braies. He tore lengths from his old clothing, the least objectionable parts, and wrapped them around his feet.
He returned to the house with a newly-filled bucket, feeling all the more vulnerable for being clean, as if there were one less shield betwixt him and the world. When he walked in, Yusuf looked at him, holding his gaze. The back of his neck prickled.
Yusuf’s eyes dropped first. He took a deep breath, and then held out his dagger, grip first.
“Butcher those things outside,” he said. “It would not do to attract…” He hesitated, searching for a word with a slightly frown. “…banat awa.”
Nicolò blinked. He had no idea what that could be, but it probably would not be good, and so he did as he was told. He returned after his clumsy butchering to Yusuf baking some form of flat bread on a hot stone. It might have only been flour and water, but the smell alone was enough to make his stomach groan like a dying man.
Yusuf looked up.
“How do we cook your… creatures?”
Nicolò placed the cloth-wrapped pieces of meat on the ground. It was darker than rabbit, but in other ways much the same.
“Any way should be fine,” he said.
And it was. He almost wept at the smell of roasting meat, and when he set a piece in his mouth, hot enough to cause pain, the flavour did not matter: he did weep. Yusuf eyed him, chewing on a piece of lonely bread and Nicolò could see the tension in the lines of him, torn between morality and hunger.
“Astaghfirullah,” Yusuf muttered, and speared a piece of meat with his dagger. He brought it to his lips, hesitated, and bit. As he chewed, his head dropped, and his shoulders shook. Nicolò did not understand why, but the sight appeased him.
It was a meagre meal, but for them, with stomachs hollow from hunger, it was a feast.