The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 3: An Aspect of Fate

A month before Ibn-Khaldun arrived at the Krak des Chevaliers, Clarinda Trevisan ignored Genevieve Stratioticus's elbow as it nudged deeply into her side.

She shoved her friend back and cast her gaze upward to the vast dome of Hagia Sophia, a great basilican church in Constantinople. In a golden gloaming through the windows of the upper galleries, the late afternoon sun shifted from a cloudless cyan sky into the dusky indigo of evening.

"Clare!" Genevieve hissed.

Clarinda continued to disregard Genie, caught up in looking upward, even if her neck ached because of the golden Egyptian collar that topped the green silk dress she'd borrowed for this evening's mass. Clarinda's friend, Genevieve Stratioticus, had chosen it, assuring her that the garment was in keeping with current fashion of the upper classes.

As a sailing merchant's daughter of seventeen, Clarinda gave little regard to what anyone thought of her personal fashion tastes. She preferred the home-sewn, loose linen tunic and trousers that she wore while aboard her father's ship. Even if this heavy plate was the kind of collar that Genevieve called "very fashionable," the metallic curves that covered her shoulders and breasts were simply too heavy and hot to bear in these closing weeks of August.

"Clare!" Genevieve again prodded her, her voice an urgent whisper. "For once, could you please just look at the priest?"

Clarinda acquiesced, clasping her hands dramatically together in a steeple beneath her chin. The pious action allowed her to give attention again to the dome. Thousands of oil lamps rested upon flat silver disks above the assembled crowd, their flickering flames glinting off gossamer wires that descended from the roof like dew-laden spider-strands.

When combined with the sunlight reflecting off the gold-gilt mosaics on the dome's interior, the sight became hypnotic.

Dio omnipotente, she thought, the workmanship that wrought this place!

Her mind strayed to other glorious sights she'd seen while sailing with her father—the pyramids in Egypt and the Acropolis at Athens, both vivid in her memory.

At thought of her father, Clarinda's mind turned to the sea, and tears flooded her eyes at his uncertain fate.

"Clarinda, please! I'm serious. You're now officially embarrassing me!" the teenaged girl next to her hissed, giving another nudge.

"Forget them. What about God?" Clarinda shot back, finally irritated enough to speak. Sometimes her friend didn't know when to shut up. "Do you think God cares if I'm watching a priest or looking at candles?"

"God isn't what this is all about, you mule!" Genevieve replied with a tortured expression.

"We're in a basilica, Genie," Clarinda whispered. "I think God might have something to do with it."

"Only if He's going to come down and dine with those who are here tonight. I know some of these people, Clarinda, and we can get invited to the best dinner parties if the person I bring can be trusted not to gawk at every beautiful thing like ... a ... a ... commoner! I swear, sometimes...."

Clarinda let her friend's words become a meaningless hum and returned to looking up at the ceiling.

Padre.

The tears came back at the thought of him. In her blurred vision the entire domed area became the celestial heavens that had hovered protectively over her family's ship, the Maritina, for the thousand nights she'd been aboard the vessel. Where in this moment of sea yearning could she make out the North Star among the burning oil lamps? Where could she find the guidance to learn what had happened to her father?