There was a silence after he spoke.

  The servant said, “My hands are like this so you can mount.” It wasn’t yet dawn.

  “Sorry! Sorry, brother.” The monk stepped in the servant’s cupped hands and pulled himself up onto the horse. “Excited to meet my traveling companions. You know where we’re going?”

  The servant did not answer.

  They rode slowly along the causeway at the top of the city wall. Below them, the dull morning waves broke against the battlements. The sun was rising over the Adriatic. The monk looked to the east and thought about how, the next day, he would be sailing toward that rising sun and seeing impossible sights.

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the old palace where the Byzantine governor of Apulia had lived until ousted by the Norman invaders. In the courtyard, the household was unloading wood and drawing water, preparing for the day. The tiles were smeared with mud, and someone was sloshing water from a bucket onto nautical mosaics.

  The servant led Nicephorus into the great house. Nicephorus deftly swiveled sideways to avoid a boy with kindling and he whispered, “Who am I meeting?”

  “The Factor,” said the servant. This told Nicephorus nothing.

  They entered a grand triclinium, where the Byzantine governor had once dined with admirals and later had cried at his loss.

  The Factor sat by a small fire that had been built against the morning’s chill. He was a heavily chiseled Norman, his hair cut blunt, his nose a wedge, his skin rough and red. He was perhaps forty. He looked like business, presumption, and impatience.

  This kind of man made Nicephorus nervous. Next to them, he felt young, like a gangly novice, though he was over thirty. He never knew what to do with his hands, which he tended to use during conversation to illustrate things like songbirds and the first rising of the sun at Creation.

  “Brother Nicephorus?” said the Factor. “You had the dream?”

  “I did,” said Nicephorus.

  “Hope it was right,” said the Factor. “They’re sending me to oversee it all.”

  He said his name was Rollo de Bailleul. He did not make it sound like Nicephorus would ever need to use it.

  He explained the expedition would consist of two ships: the Epiphany, the saint hunter’s ship, and a larger vessel, a bireme dromon manned by Bari sailors and marines, the Dagobert, which would act as an escort. The Venetians were also probably racing to Myra to claim the saint for their own. It was not impossible that the expedition would see “action at sea.” This phrase alone seemed to make the Factor grimly pleased.

  He explained that he had been engaged to watch out for the interests of the Norman overlords of Bari in the Nicholas matter. His specialty was military logistics. He would be in charge of the expedition as a whole. The saint hunter and his team of trained martyrologists would oversee the theft—the liberation—of Nicholas itself. But Bari was paying the saint hunter too well to trust him. The Factor also wanted Brother Nicephorus to stay alert. There were, apparently, many swindles in the saint business. They both would have to notarize the corpse when it was exhumed.

  “Have you met the saint hunter?” the Factor asked. “He wants to hear the details of your dream.”

  “I have not,” said Nicephorus.

  The Factor called for the saint hunter to be brought.

  While they waited, Nicephorus found the silence awkward. The first light was coming in through the arched windows of the triclinium. “I like the dawn,” he began. “Do you know how I greet the morning each day?”

  The face did not respond: blocky, granitic.

  Nicephorus would have just shut up, but he did not want to leave a question dangling. So he said uncomfortably, “I sing Lauds.”

  The face remained fixed.

  They sat there, the monk who had never left the hot, flat plains of Apulia, and the invader from the muddy and obscure western fringes of the earth, those chilly Gaulish marches inhabited only by barbarians, bears, boars, and the pettier dragons. Out in the Frankish provinces, the princes were nothing but tribal chieftains. The kings were badly drawn Byzantine emperors scribbled in haste between battles. The Norman warrior sat motionless, speechless, needing nothing, offering nothing.

  Then, “The saint hunter,” he said.

  Nicephorus turned to see the handsome Tartar from the taverna. Standing next to him was a pallid giant, shaved bald as a yam and dressed in lamellar armor: Rus, from the looks of him, and so tall his legs buckled inward at the knee.

  “I am called Tyun,” said the saint hunter. “This is my bodyguard, Shchek. You are the monk Nicephorus?”

  Nicephorus blurted out to the Factor, “This man looks blatantly piratical.”

  The saint hunter regarded him evenly. “I shave every three days.”

  “He was telling stories of impossibilities down on the docks to seduce women.”

  “This is the dreamer?” Tyun asked the Factor.

  “Apparently. Abbot Helias vouched for his probity and honesty.”

  “Then,” said the saint hunter, with a half shrug, “I suppose we’re seeing proof of it.”

  He walked forward and took a seat on one of the dining benches. The Rus giant, Shchek, stood behind him, tasseled spear held in military readiness.

  “Dreamer,” said Tyun, “no slander. I am a professional. I have touched the hand of Doubting Thomas in Mabar, which clasps into a fist at any untruth. I have located the caves of desert fathers and Shiite mystics to search for their sacred bones. I have gone diving for treasure in the Sea of Sodom among the ruins of the city Heaven blasted for sin. On the shore you can still see Lot’s wife where she was transformed into a pillar of salt. Her features are almost unrecognizable, and there are holes through which the wind moans. The locals use her as a sheep lick.” He leaned far forward and reached his arm out toward Nicephorus, almost touching the monk’s face with a finger. Nicephorus reared back. The Tartar asked gently, with a sweet, dangerous smile, “What about you, dreamer? Have you ever swum in the Sea of Sodom?”

  They stared at each other, the Benedictine monk and Tyun the saint hunter.

  Something between a blush and a chill spread through the monk’s chest. The finger quivered near the cleft of his chin.

  Then Tyun sat back. “If we are going to unite your city with the Blessed Nicholas, I need to hear about your dream. What clues does it offer to the circumstances of the body?”

  Nicephorus said uneasily, “The saint did not speak…directly of the theft of his body.”

  “Liberation,” Tyun corrected.

  The monk pointedly addressed Rollo de Bailleul rather than the saint hunter. He admitted, “It was a vague dream. The saint traveled through the air, through snow and a storm. He was gift giver and light bringer. He spoke to spirits, to men, to birds, and to beasts. He came and chanted and spoke to me…”

  “What did he say?” asked Tyun.

  “That we should walk forth boldly. That this was how we should do good. He marched out through a gate of ice and pointed at the wider world. I took it to mean we could no longer hide from the sickness behind our monastery walls, but should visit our friends throughout the city and give them aid.”

  “Walk forth boldly!” exclaimed Tyun. “There is your mandate!”

  “I do not know if the dream was inspired,” Nicephorus admitted to Rollo de Bailleul.

  “You can express no doubt,” the Factor said. “Thousands depend on this vision.”

  “It took place in a land of snow and ice. Lycia is hot. It has never seen snow.”

  “There are mountains in Lycia,” said Tyun. “It probably snows on the peaks.”

  The monk raised his hand. “I cannot say absolutely—”

  “There is no doubt,” said Tyun. “Listen, dreamer: You will sail with me on the Epiphany. We will talk more about this dream.” To the Factor: “The body of the thaumaturge saint is held in the city of Myra, in the basilica where Nicholas was bishop—peace be upon him. The church is about two miles from the port.” The saint hunter reached into his sleeve and pulled out a letter, neatly folded. He untangled its quadrants. “I have written testimony from two pilgrims who visited the basilica. They have drawn a map of the sanctuary. They report there is a brotherhood who watch over the tomb and protect the corpse. We don’t know the exact location of the sarcophagus within the church itself.”

  “Perhaps the saint does not wish to leave,” said Nicephorus.

  Tyun and the Factor ignored him. “Caliph Harun al-Rashid once sent a general to steal the healing corpse,” said Tyun. “He could not find the body. He left the basilica frustrated and empty-handed. His ship immediately sank in a storm.”

  “The location of the tomb is not on that map?” asked Rollo de Bailleul.

  “No.” Tyun folded the map and slipped it back into his sleeve. “But we do know that there is an apparatus for the collection of the sacred slime, the oleum martyris. Often in these cases there is actually a system for piping in holy water or oil, running it over the blessed remains, and then draining it from the tomb. The priests decant it into small bottles for pilgrims to drink.” Tyun smiled at Nicephorus. “This shall be our sign: I suspect the sarcophagus has a cock.” When Nicephorus shifted his feet, Tyun clarified kindly: “A spigot.”

  “Do we use subterfuge or force?” asked the Factor.

  “We assess. Our story—and you must ride on the same donkey, dreamer—our story, once we leave the port of Bari, is that we are on our way to pick up a shipment of grain in Antioch. We will be stopping for water and provisions every night or two. We will be asked our destination. Antioch, yes?” He looked sharply at the monk. “Do you understand? This is a necessary lie.”

  Nicephorus frowned.

  The Factor insisted, “Brother Nicephorus.”

  Nicephorus was about to speak.

  “We will keep him onboard, then,” said Tyun. “He won’t talk to anyone about our mission or his doubts about his dream.” Tyun looked up toward his giant. “For the moment, let’s invite Brother Nicephorus to stay in a pleasant room down by the docks for contemplation and prayer until we’re ready to depart tomorrow morning. Perhaps he needs to stay under lock and key.”

  “There is no need,” said Nicephorus.

  “There is always need for prayer,” said Tyun, rising.

  The giant moved to take Nicephorus’s arm.

  * * *

  · · ·

  St. Nicholas was born in the town of Patara, on the Lycian coast. The Roman grain ships came and went in the harbor. Up in the hills was a great temple of Apollo, where during the six months of winter, pilgrims came from all over the empire to ask questions of the oracle.

  Though Nicholas was born when the empire of Rome was still pagan, we’re told that he was a Christian from birth: as a newborn, when the blood was first washed from him, he stood upright on his own legs in the bath for two hours babbling Christ’s name. As an infant, on holy fast days he refused to suck on either of his mother’s breasts.

  When he was a young man, Nicholas joined a monastery near the old city of Xanthos, half ruined since the people of that town had all burned themselves alive. The monastery was built outside of town, down a processional avenue, in the shadow of three abandoned temples half sunk in a marsh: one to Apollo, one to Artemis, and one to Leto, mother goddess of ancient Lycia. It was there in that marsh that Leto, we are told, angry that no one would let her take a cooling drink after she gave birth to gods, transformed the Lycian peasants into frogs.

  Nicholas and his brethren took stones and capitals from those tumbled porticoes and raised up their sanctuary to the Christian god.

  I picture his early life as quiet, cloistered, the only sound in that landscape being the complaints of cattle and the buzzing of cicadas. But the Vitae of Nicholas all tell us that when he touched the stones of fallen temples, demons fled from him, shrieking in the air.

  One night during Nicholas’s youth, as he was passing down a street in Xanthos or Patara, he heard a father talking to his daughters. “I do not have money for your dowries,” said the father, weeping. “We are penniless. Therefore, you must sell yourselves to the men who come to port here.”

  Nicholas was appalled. He went to his parents’ house and stole from their treasury a great quantity of their gold and he wrapped it up in three bundles as a gift. Each night for the next three nights, he tossed a bundle of gold through the window of that family’s house: a dowry for each daughter. The father was delighted, though it is hard to sympathize with him. The daughters, anyway, were saved, and bought fine husbands, one for each of them.

  Some believe that this is why pawnshops hang signs with three gold balls above their doors, for the three dowry bundles. Others say Nicholas did not throw the packages through the window; he tossed them down the chimney.

  This story is what we recall in giving our children miraculous gifts from the saint: We shall not have to sell you. We will keep the world from you as long as we can. Soon enough, you will have to sell yourselves.

  * * *

  —

  The room was hot. Once, at lunch, they unlocked the door to feed him jerky. Nicephorus looked down on the square by the docks. He did not pray. The closest things to cherubim were idiot flies circling his head. They landed in a reflection on copper.

  They could not find the window, though it had no glass.

  * * *

  —

  Cool night, and Nicephorus did not close the shutters. He did not want to feel closed in, though the door was locked. He stared out at the empty square. A small moon was on the sea. The great ships slept like whales, bobbing at anchor.

  He could not sleep. He had not been outside of Bari since he was a boy, a novice at the monastery. Every day was a round of offices, a routine of blessings, the faces he knew. The families in the tall, narrow streets around the monastery, the monks themselves. People proud that prayer had become rote. Nicephorus prayed at known hours. He purchased food in bulk and kept accounts. Each day he ate the same soups, the same pulses. There was a terror in leaving that all behind, but Nicephorus was also thrilled. He thought about the seas he’d sail, the sawtoothed waves of oceans in illuminated Gospels. Saint Luke and Saint Paul had sailed to the ports of Lycia.

  But he did not trust his own vision, the glimpse of the saint.

  He knew he—

  There was a figure on the quay, walking alone.

  It was the saint thief, cloaked and solitary. Nicephorus leaned forward and watched.

  Tyun prowled along the ranks of tenders.

  Another figure: very tall, but breasted. A woman, draped in a shawl, waiting by a stunted fig. The saint thief approached her as if they would pass each other. Nicephorus could not hear the whisper of their feet above the lapping waves. They stopped parallel to each other. They turned. Now they faced each other.

  They were close enough for confidences.

  Now they spoke. Their voices could not be heard above the restless surf, which said only, Distance. Distance. Distance. Tomorrow. Change.

  They pointed. Perhaps indications of location. Perhaps negotiations enumerated in the air.

  Then some conclusion was reached; abruptly, they kissed. Nicephorus watched, calculating: It wasn’t Gallenice. Much too tall.

  Then the two pushed off from each other. They both swiveled and walked in opposite directions.

  Tyun went around a corner to the right and was gone. The woman walked to the left. In the confusion of shadows, Nicephorus could not make her out anymore. Still, he watched.

  The room was getting cold. The monk lumped his feet one on top of the other to try to preserve their warmth. He wished for the eyes of an eagle.

  In a few minutes, a ship’s boat pulled away from the docks on the promontory—it must be the woman—and rowed out toward a warship, a mammoth trireme dromon of two hundred oars slumbering on the deep.

  Nicephorus marked its position.

  In the morning, he was asleep on the pallet when the tavern owner unlocked the door and let the dogs in to wake him.

  * * *

  —

  Shortly after Nicholas became Bishop of Myra, appointed by the Christian God in a vision, there was a drought in Lycia and a famine, or so the story goes.

  At this time, there were three young scholars traveling together who stopped at an inn. The innkeeper apologized but said he had nothing to feed them. The three scholars said they would pay handsomely for a room where they could sleep, protected from bandits and slavering beasts. They showed the innkeeper the gold their parents had given them for travel.

  So they went to bed, and the innkeeper brooded in his kitchen, bent low over his knees, and then he called for his wife, and they whispered, and they tied on their gray aprons and took knives and went upstairs, and he held the boys down and shoved straw in their mouths while she cut their throats. The innkeeper and his wife took the bodies down the stairs and drained their blood and then they butchered the boys, cutting them into steaks and rashers.

  The Blessed Nicholas, so we hear, was traveling with his episcopal retinue, visiting the lonely village churches in the hills. He stopped for the night at the inn. He and all his deacons sat around the table and asked for supper. The innkeeper brought out a rich ragout, rare in a time of famine.

  Nicholas and his retinue were delighted. They picked up bread to dip in the stew. They tore the bread with their hands. The sauce was rich and brown with fats. They dipped their bread.

  Then Nicholas heard the angels speak. There was a light upon him.

  He shoved the table away from him violently. A bench tipped over as he rose and shouted, “Stop! Do not put a morsel of meat in your mouths.”