“And where might that be?” I ventured.
“Acre,” Jean replied, as if I’d asked the dumbest question ever. His eyes expressed increasing suspicion. He pronounced the name of the city differently from the way it’s pronounced in Hebrew.
“Ah, right, Acco,” I said with forced lightness.
We fell silent. Jean examined one of the horse’s hooves with great attention. Brunette came up to me and licked my hand. I scratched her behind the ears and took deep breaths. “I dreamed about you afterward,” I told Jean. He continued tinkering with the hoof.
“I dreamed you owned a brewery, and you were pleased I liked the drink you offered me.”
He turned to me abruptly. The horse whinnied with resentment. Jean’s eyes opened in terror, and he placed a hand on his heart.
“This is too much …” he stammered.
“What’s too much?” I asked.
“I …” His eyes wandered. “I dreamed of you too. That we were sitting at a trestle table by a very strange-looking building. You wept and drank from my ale.”
The clarity of the day was obscured by a passing cloud, and all at once the atmosphere turned ominous. A raven hovered above, screeching hoarsely, its wings flapping with evil intent. My hand tightened around the ten-agorot coin.
“You are pale, my lady,” Jean noted apprehensively.
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” I replied, barely managing to form the words. “Perhaps I should go home.” I knelt beside the spring, too weak to stand any longer, and removed the necklace with the Ibelin coin from my neck.
“Wait!” Jean cried out. I looked up at him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I know not what is happening. Wicked sorcery or utter insanity … but here you are.” He paused, and I flashed him a crooked smile.
Suddenly, he was smiling too. He patted his horse distractedly and said, “In truth, why should I be so alarmed? I thought of you and dreamed of you, and here you are, like the fairy Thibaut keeps claiming you are. Let us make the most of it.”
I enjoyed listening to him talk, with his rolling Old Frenchr. I didn’t know whether to attribute the fact that I understood him to the passage afforded me by the spring or to my gift for language.
I moved toward him. I wanted to hug him, but it seemed inappropriate. I patted the horse instead, and it gave a loud snort.
The sun reappeared, and the plain appeared green and full of life. Birds chirped all around, and the deep blue sea twinkled in front of us. The last time we met, I wasted the opportunity by stressing out.I’ve got to chill, I told myself.
“Do you know what the time is?” I asked, fishing my cell phone out of my bag and noting, once again, that it wasn’t working.
“What do you mean?” Jean asked. He removed two small ceramic cups from his satchel and opened a cloth sack containing nuts and dates. I noticed that he was doing everything in his power to ignore the instrument in my hand.
“The hour today? Twelve? One?” Jean lifted his head and frowned, perplexed, as if I’d asked another ridiculous question. I looked up at the sky. The sun inclined slightly westward, beyond the zenith, and the shadows were short. It was probably about one in the afternoon. For a moment I was bothered by the idea that Halimi might be worried about me. And then I turned to Jean.
“So, have you been waiting for me the whole morning?” I inclined my head in his direction. I wanted him to be that same youthful, mellow person he had been the first time we met.
He looked at me and smiled broadly. “In fact, yes,” he admitted. My own smile broadened too. “Truth be told, my lady, I knew not what to expect,” Jean confessed. “But I could not stop myself from returning here, as soon as time allowed.” I bowed my head in gratitude, and he responded with a chivalrous nod.
“Perhaps we can ride to the sea together?” I asked. The beach looked wild and utterly empty. I wanted to gallop down there right away, but I continued, “And on the way, you can tell me how you’ve been these past few days.”
“How I’ve been?” Jean asked, scratching his forehead. “What do you mean?”
I sighed, exasperated.
“I mean, what did you do over the past few days, how did you feel?”
Jean raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, but all he said was, “Very well then, do you have a horse for riding nearby?”
I chuckled. A horse for riding.
“In truth,” Jean began, narrowing his eyes at me but still smiling, “there are stables here, a little to the south. There are horses there, not exactly for riding, but pack horses for the quarry carts. Yet they are amenable and well-disciplined, and surely the knights will consent if we ask them.”
“I … ah …” I spluttered uncomfortably, “I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”
