The Codex Lacrimae, Part 1: The Mariner's Daughter and Doomed Knight

Chapter 9: The Flyting at Caesarea

A few days before Ríg and Jacob dashed to the hospital ward, sixty leagues southwest at the coastal city of Caesarea, Clarinda Trevisan was well into a mid-afternoon supper in the tower keep of the Templar Grand Master, Evremar of Choques.

A month had passed since the departure from Constantinople, and she now sat at dinner with Pasquale, Alexander, Genevieve, and a roomful of strangers.

Momentarily bored with the conversation, the young Venetian woman looked at the bay's waters through the portico where she and her fellow diners sat. The topic had drifted to local and political matters and such talk threatened to drive Clarinda insane with impatience — she didn't want to talk about taxation or watch the Grand Master use fancy words to spar with the ousted King Guy and Queen of Jerusalem! She needed action, to return to the sea, to do everything possible to find her father—whether he was somewhere within the ruins of the Roman amphitheater or in the hundreds of houses in the city itself—to do anything active that would get her moving again and perhaps closer to finding her Padre.

But, no, while grey and white plumed gulls cried nearby, circling overhead as a couple alit on the rail of the wrought-iron balcony, she just sat and endured the slow agony of this semiformal dinner! Feeling as if she might scream inside—Padre, where are you? I feel you so close!—she focused again on the waters of the harbor and then looked around at the assembled diners.

So many smiles. Hiding so many different realities and agendas.

Her eyes drifted westward, and she felt some reassurance at the sight of the two three-masted Venetian round ships from her fleet, anchored a safe distance off the concrete wharf.

The deeper hulls of the Maritina and Calypso had been unable to enter into the shallows of the inner harbor entrance as Clarinda was unsure what kind of reception to expect. She'd ordered the crews on both vessels to remain battle-ready. Then she, Pasquale, Alexander, Genevieve, and Kenezki rowed ashore to the city in a small dinghy. This group was all that had set forth from Constantinople over a month ago. Clarinda had followed Urd's advice in bringing Alex, but also trusted her own initiative where Genevieve and Kenezki were concerned. Some deeply buried instinct told her that they'd both be needed before her quest was over.

Following Kenezki's instructions, they'd maneuvered the dinghy to a jetty at the north of the port, the tiny vessel now jouncing softly against that half-ruined wharf.

Curiously, they'd been directed by a guardsman to dock close to a shipwrecked Genoese galley that had apparently been consumed by flames.

The fire had been recent. The strong reek of scorched caulking and pine emanated from the shipwreck and smoke still rose from the broken main mast that tilted forward into tangled and charred rigging. To Clarinda's eyes, the splintered and tortured spars caused the ruined hulk to look like the blackened hand of some undersea monster reaching from the deeps to grasp the jetty. The members of her small party stepped cautiously over the debris that lined the pier and Clarinda felt a tremor pass through her as she did so.

How hot must that fire have been to make such a pyre, she wondered, and why do I feel as if Padre was on that vessel?

Now, some two hours later, Clarinda found herself impatient and sitting cross-legged on the floor of Evremar's second-story, private porch of bleached sandstone.

Evremar of Choques was an enormous man, with a shock of orange hair that fell thinly in strands over a sunburned forehead; having no discernible throat, his triple chins folded in a fleshy heap onto his bulky torso, and his entire body seemed to press dangerously in the stomach area against a heavy white tunic and red robes. He lay almost on his side on the floor, propped up by gigantic satin pillows in the Roman style.