Bound Home
Chapter 9
From the temple, deep in its tender bamboos,
Comes the low sound of an evening bell,
While the hat of a pilgrim carries the sunset
Farther and farther down the green mountain.
-Liu Changqing, On Parting With the Buddhist Pilgrim Ling Che
His drinking companion from the port, Aalim, finds him again in the midday quiet. Everyone has left their work to take a meal or to worship, leaving Guy practically alone by the water, a shade tree his only companion.
Until Aalim arrives and slumps into a cross-legged position in the sand. "What do you do these days, Shajarah?"
Guy cocks an eyebrow and gives him a sideways glance. He is tired to the bone, and his tolerance for guesswork has never been high. "Excuse me?"
Aalim smiles and squints into the clear blue sky. "Do you mind? You are as tall as a tree. So: I call you 'tree' since you will not tell me your name."
It makes a lazy sort of sense, Guy thinks. "You never asked for my name."
"It is not polite," Aalim replies with an accompanying shrug.
Guy murmurs an apology and takes a deep breath as he tries to comprehend another aspect of this strange culture. "I am Guy, of Gisborne."
"You prefer to go by that name?"
It is an odd question, one that he doubts he has ever been asked before. "What makes you ask such a thing?"
"Oh," Aalim sighs, eyes still tracing some imaginary line in the sky. "Some of the warriors here...they try to forget themselves. It cannot be easy carrying so much blood on your name." He sways to and fro like the palm tree above them. "You told me before that there was something you wanted to forget."
"Yes," Guy says curtly.
"A man's deeds are recorded in his name. I can call you Shajarah if you prefer."
A smile turns Guy's mouth. "A clean start..."
"You could say that."
"Do you really believe that? That a man can begin anew just by changing his name?"
Again, Aalim shrugs. "Why not? A man's destiny is what he makes of it." He glances at Guy, and then goes back to swaying and staring at the empty sky. The silence stretches between them. "I should have brought wine," he adds as an afterthought.
Guy breathes out a laugh. Shaking his head, he asks, "Why would you choose to waste your time with me? Shouldn't you be...praying, or something?"
"I am not Muslim. I pray when it suits me."
"But you do pray?"
"Oh, yes. A man needs to know there's something greater than himself. Keeps us in our place."
"You have an interesting way of looking at things."
"Do you pray?"
Guy presses his lips together and turns his face away. An emotion he cannot name gathers at the back of his throat.
In the distance, the cry for noon worship echoes in the dry, cold air.
"Well," Aalim says softly, shifting his legs to draw them closer. "Perhaps someone is praying for us."
Time was different just after her husband died. It was like a courteous stranger trying to weave through a crowd, interrupting the flow of people as little as possible, slipping past quietly and quickly - slipping past her with only a glancing touch. "Excuse me," and gone. Days flashed by like a dream. Before she knew it, months had passed, and she felt untouched, unchanged.
But now it lingers. Now she sits with Time and stares at it, and it at her, and Time makes her feel every passing second as if it is a drop of rainwater trailing ponderously down the wall.
The autumn after Will's death was a morning mist, gone in an instant. But winter has come to make a home inside of her. The loss of her husband is no longer a raging fire of grief – it is the cold grip of loneliness.
She saw Gisborne today. A glimpse of his face, his shoulders, and then he was gone. Her pulse, quickened by the encounter, still has not settled. She dwells on him now, relieved to have the distraction, to have some manner of ignoring the way that Time sits across from her, staring and counting and crushing her with its unmovable weight.
She wants to speak with Gisborne. Her curiosity is burning, and she cannot shake the feeling that she owes it to Will to look into this matter, to make sure that he is not here to do something terrible, something she may be able to prevent. It seems unlikely. Nottingham's sheriff would be a fool to try again to break the peace brokered between King Richard and Salah-al-din – that trick, tried once, is now useless.
But she needs answers. She needs to be out doing something, anything, because these silent hours - these stretching days in her empty rooms, with the unchanging void where only ghosts of old happiness live - she is in their mouth, and she fears that, without purpose and distraction, she will soon be swallowed down.