Medieval Gacha Lord

Chapter 31: Arriving in the Holy Land

Today was a rare spell of good weather. The sky was clear for miles, the wind gentle, and the waves calm. After the death of that harsh and stingy Jewish merchant, the captain and sailors no longer needed to feign busyness. They exposed their damp, sticky skin and lounged leisurely on deck, sunbathing. All sorts of laundered clothes hung from the mast. Passengers also chatted in twos and threes on deck; no one wanted to stay cooped up in the stuffy cabins any longer.

For the past two days, the atmosphere on board had been very awkward. Several passengers had simply disembarked at Crete, planning to transfer to other ships to reach the Holy Land, just to escape the awkward situation.

On the night of the Sirens, Lothar had witnessed many unsightly scenes—passengers and sailors, men and women alike, embracing in a tangled mass... And in Catholic doctrine, both adultery and homosexuality were sins.

"Once we reach the Holy Land, all sins will be erased," Father Beckett had told the people. That night, under the influence of the Sirens’ song, he himself had tumbled with a male sailor in a cabin for a long time.

Jesus certainly wouldn’t think that people’s sins were entirely erased just by arriving in the Holy Land, but the priest still said so. Just as Jesus wouldn’t consider killing infidels sinless, but rather a path to Heaven, yet His Holiness the Pope had said so.

Sailors had a particularly clear-eyed view of these things. Having spent years journeying on the seas, their faith wasn’t particularly devout. When tsunamis, pirates, or storms struck, they might even pray to the pagan sea god Poseidon. And on a narrow ship, almost isolated from the world, homosexual encounters, while not commonplace, were certainly not unimaginable.

The Sirens’ corpses were said to yield a precious perfume with aphrodisiac qualities, comparable to ambergris, but Lothar abandoned the idea of cutting up their bodies to extract it. He couldn’t yet bring himself to butcher humanoid creatures as if they were pigs or sheep. Even if he could, the idea of using it selling aphrodisiac didn’t seem compelling to him.

***

Two full days had passed since they sailed from Crete. They had passed Cyprus Island in the interim but hadn’t lingered, merely replenishing their freshwater before departing. It was once a core territory of the Eastern Empire but had opportunistically declared independence after the coronation of the Eastern Empire’s Empress Regent and possessed a respectable naval force.