Excerpt…
October, 1324, the Holy Land
THE CONVULSING WOMAN screamed again. She had a painfully loud and piercing scream which the rock walls of the cave only enhanced. Everyone in earshot cringed. Some cursed. And there were those who looked as if they would as soon murder the woman out of hand than endure another episode of her fits.
“This,” said their guide, in full voice which was still amazingly although barely audible over the screams, “is the Mount of Temptation, where our lord Jesus Christ fasted for forty days, and was tempted by the Devil to throw himself over the cliff.”
It wasn’t the oddest thing Jaufre had heard during the last two weeks.
They had gone to Gaza first, arriving there six weeks before, taking their leave of Rambahadur Raj. The havildar ignored Jaufre’s attempts to express his gratitude, instead congratulating him on Jaufre’s rebirth as a full fighting man. “Not quite a Gurkha, no,” he said jovially, clapping Jaufre on the back with a blow that would have knocked him to his knees were he still in his weakened state in Kabul. “But I believe you could hold your own with a Gurkha if it came to that, young sir!”
Alaric, too, took his leave of the havildar and seemed to consider himself a member of Jaufre’s party thenceforward. He said airily that he’d had enough of the high desert and, besides, he had a hankering to see Venice again. Jaufre thought with inward amusement that Johanna’s habit of picking up strays seemed to have lingered on even when she was not with them.
Dana sez–The convulsing woman is based on the autobiography of Margery Kempe, an Englishwoman who pilgrimmed all the way to Jerusalem and back, and San Juan de Compostela, Cambridge, and, well, evidently Kempe made pilgrimages to holy places all over Europe her life’s work. Pretty much the entirety of her journeys she suffered screaming fits, apocalyptic visions, had conversations out loud with devils and demons, and in my considered opinion had to have been the fellow traveler from hell. I like to imagine the reaction of the tour guide in Venice when she showed up asking for passage to Jerusalem. By then she must have been known by reputation throughout the profession. A day or two out the Middle Sea would have been right there, right over the side. Sooooo tempting…