by K. T. Tomb
He had once heard talk from dying soldiers of a dark tunnel and a luminescence at the end, but did the stories ever speak of carrying one’s bitter enemy behind them on a makeshift litter? To Richard, that was a miracle, too, that he cared for the health and well-being of his most earnest enemy.
The path began a lazy turn to the right, leading them, Richard was reasonably sure, back to the inside of the mountain.
The light became brighter and brighter. All warmth in the tunnel seemed to disappear instantly. If it weren’t for his vague sense of their direction of travel, he would have been sure they were heading back toward the cold face of the mountain. Because of the white light, which was unlike anything he had ever seen before, Richard did not know what to think. All he could do was march forward with determination as his men and Saladin’s men exclaimed quietly about the cave of light, what it meant, and wondering if they should fall on their knees and pray.
“Nay, keep going,” Richard said.
I wonder if I’m passing the test that was mentioned in my dreams, he thought. After all, here I am with Saladin on Ararat looking for the Holy Grail. That was what was required of me in the dream. Now God just has to do his part and show me the Grail so I can redeem myself.
And then, self-doubt crept in. Regret crept in. And even though it was war, the sheer guilt of the countless slayings crept in.
A sharp fear went through him that instead of God rewarding him, this adventure to find the Grail would be a failure and the cave might become his tomb if his enemies, and possibly even his men, retaliated against him for a wasted journey.
Richard, why did you order those twenty thousand men murdered?
God’s voice in the dream was coming back to his mind and he shuddered in fear. He hadn’t really known it was so many. He’d thought perhaps three thousand to five thousand. The worst part, he couldn’t even voice, not even to his priest. Just because he didn’t know how to transport so many, he’d also had Muslim women and children slaughtered at Acre.
Not just men. Every one of the prisoners.
The terror of his sins prickled at the ends of his fingers and down his back as the excitement of the quest for the Grail began to feel as if he was about to meet the exact reward that he deserved for being a bloodthirsty murderer who was every bit as heinous as Saladin and his men. If not more so.
He guessed that if he drank from the cup and God found him unworthy to do so, it would be the last sip he ever took. He swallowed in fear, and yet did not back down from his obedience to God. He must save Saladin’s life, even if it meant his own death. In the choice between duty to God and duty to country, he knew which was more important. And he pressed on.
He heard de Mandeville’s voice behind him: “Your Majesty?”
“Yes?” he said, not faltering in his step.
“I believe we are under ice, under the glacier and that the light, the white light that we see, is the sun shining through layers of ice and snow.”
He was furious with de Mandeville. Was the man trying to say that it was not a miracle that they walked into a cave with no torches lit? “No, the white light is a miracle. You can touch the walls and see that they are not ice. They are stone. Solid stone. The light does not come from without the cave. It comes from within.”
He heard de Mandeville clear his throat. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said unconvincingly.
Richard pushed de Mandeville's doubt out of his mind and kept on bearing the front of the litter on which Saladin barely breathed, if at all.
Richard had plenty of reasons to fear that God was about to punish his cruelty and wickedness, many of which were being considered now among his men for that uncommon act of cruelty: the mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims.
He was certain that his knights were trying to ease their own minds of the evil nature of his murderous orders, and of their complicity. When confronted by a miracle such as the white light inside a cave, it was only natural to wonder if one was even worthy of seeing these miracles, or if they were even miracles.
Richard knew what they were thinking because he was thinking the same thing: Will I be punished for all I have done?
Why had he had swords run through twenty thousand helpless prisoners until he was sloshing through blood? He did not know. He really didn’t. The decision had seemed to come to him in an arrogant and murderous instant, though it had been suggested to him by de Sable the day before the mass slaughter had taken place.
It was de Sable who had suggested that it would be a laborious task to keep track of the prisoners, and feed them and keep them watered and contained, especially with Saladin keeping pace with them with his own murderous army. Richard had scoffed at de Sable’s suggestion and decried it. But the next day, in an evil acquiescence that accepted the Templar’s solution as the most practical, Richard had not only manifested it but had taken part in it with his own sword. His own flesh had reeked of death for days afterward. He could scarcely bear the stench and he even remembered what it smelled like.
Execute twenty thousand men?
The very idea had sickened him, but de Sable, Master of the Knights Templar had planted the bad seed in his mind and Richard had allowed it to fester overnight. It had come to pass by his own orders.
He remembered de Sable’s very words: “They would willingly die for their heathen god, my lord. To them, it is an act of honor to die in the name of Allah. You will not hear one peep of dismay or fear from them and they will line up bravely to be martyred and released into their greatest adventure. They believe it with all of their hearts, that this is the most honorable way to depart from this life.”
Though he had trouble believing that their fierce captives would give up their lives so easily, the thought of how easy it might be, to use their own faith to help slaughter them, had stuck in Richard’s mind. And he had used it, over and over, until the very earth was mixed with blood and offal and heads rolling away, wide-eyed.
Richard, already troubled by his own crisis of faith, wondered if he would willingly die for his God.
Or would even want to die for his God.
A desire to die for his God was absent.
He was here on this Third Crusade because it was easier than being the King of England in a cozy castle with not just his brother John, but a bunch of his relatives, constantly trying to usurp him.
Richard did not, in all honesty, think he would die for Christ. He had fought too hard to live to stick out his neck in a surrender to a scimitar in the sole pretense that he was doing it for God. Anyway, he didn’t believe in the martyrdom of a king. It was a preposterous notion. He was nearly the king of the world. Would anyone willingly give that up?
How dedicated are the prisoners to their misguided faith? he wondered. More than I am to mine? If they are willing to die for Allah without a sound, does that mean their God is more powerful than mine? Or does it mean that mine does not exist at all?
Regret spewed up like fire in his belly and burned him from the inside out. He wondered if he would feel like that all over if God threw him into the pit of fire for all eternity.
Chapter Thirteen
Richard carried his burden, Saladin, and prayed aloud to find the Grail before it was too late.
He was surprised to hear others adding their voice to his until the cave resounded with the prayers of men in two languages with the one common word: Saladin.
He prayed to God, he prayed to Mary, he prayed to the saints, and just for good measure, he prayed to the name Allah, much to the shock of everyone present.
And then he stopped praying, wondering if he had gone too far. After all, though, that was Saladin’s belief. But his new ally was too unwell to pray so, perhaps it was fitting for Richard to offer the words in his stead.
As he walked, Richard was again tormented by memories of that horrific day at Acre.
His mind went back to the day when the leaders of the Crusade had gathered in Richard’s spacious tent, debating how to transport so large
a number of prisoners, and remembering what de Sable had said, Richard had suddenly said: “Kill them all! Let them die, martyred in honor to their Allah.” And then, he had walked out of the tent, his word the law. The others had been stunned, except for de Sable, who had nodded.
When the executions had begun, Richard had watched each and every one, and he saw the honor each Muslim held. There was always fear, but mostly, there was honor. Richard was sickened and curious, and felt a little like God himself, controlling the fates of these men, his men included. It was a terrifying power and he seized it and rode it and felt the evilness of his triumph over the helpless captives, especially the women and the children.
Oh, what had he been thinking?
Richard became repulsed by his own powerful evil and also by his acquiescence to de Sable’s shocking request that Richard give him Cyprus for the Templars. The king had agreed, but only if de Sable could come up with 25,000 pieces of silver.
The thousands of Muslims who were killed that day had their camps and their pockets raided by de Sable and his accomplices. And now, here Richard was, a humbled king before God, and complicit in not just the deaths, but in the robbery of thousands.
These days, Richard could barely look at de Sable and would be happy to never see him again after this campaign was over. Master of the Templars or not, there was something entirely unpure about de Sable and Richard had fallen into the trap that the man had laid for him.
Saladin moaned again and Richard hurried through the tunnel, remembering the way in his dream when they came to forks in the tunnel.
For now, Saladin’s life hung in the balance and Richard felt like if Saladin died, he would have failed God’s command in the dream. So, hoping for true redemption, Richard toted his sick enemy Saladin behind him, knowing he had done wrong by killing ten thousand Muslims, or was it twenty thousand? He often lost count.
He was beginning to realize, in fact, that Christians and Muslims might both be right, and also might both be wrong, each in their own ways. Many months ago, when the doubt had first crept in, he had prayed to God to help him renew his faith. And he was doing that also, even as he tried to redeem himself in God’s eyes for the terrible things he had done in the name of the Crusade, or even in the name of convenience.
Killing the prisoners meant he wouldn’t have to feed, water, and secure them...His aiding and abetting of de Sable’s plot to enrich himself and buy Cyprus had been an accidental spoil of the Crusade. It had not been Richard’s intent to pillage the holy countries by killing people and robbing their dead bodies. That was not the purpose of the Crusade.
Oh, what had he done?
Richard now knew why God was angry with him. He had acted most dishonorably in war. He was unworthy of a royal crown of Earth, let alone a royal crown of Heaven. If he did not find the Grail and use it to heal Saladin, all would be lost.
All!
A soul, a country, the future of England.
Richard trudged onward. The cold seemed to not only find its way through any gap in his clothing, but made him think that his clothing had no effect against the chill at all, that nothing but a heavy robe and a blazing fire would do any good. Hot tea seemed but a distant luxury, too.
What I wouldn’t give for hot tea, Richard thought. Good English tea, not this odd, bitter herb tea of the land under my feet.
Would you give up finding the Holy Grail? No, he answered his own question. I would very much like to find the Holy Grail.
And so, he kept on, talking to himself in his head. Gustave, I needed you and you failed me by not being here. This is too hard, this is too hard.
The bend in the tunnel passageway straightened. Ahead, Richard could see what looked like a wall of snow. This appeared to be at the end of the tunnel, as if the tunnel suddenly stopped.
He could have sworn they were coming to an exit.
And now, Richard could see the cause of the white light: the sun did shine through the snow, as de Mandeville had said. Oh, he had been awful to the man. But it wasn’t really snow, was it? It was a combination of ice and snow, and the sunlight that filtered through it was white. He could see now that they were under the glacier. And he did something that he had never done before. He turned for a moment and said, “You were right, de Mandeville. I can see it now. It is just as you said. We are under the glacier.”
There was no answer and when he turned to see, de Mandeville had tears in his eyes. Richard smiled at him.
He turned forward again. Try as he might, Richard was unable to turn off his mind from the fact that not only was he reaching the end of the tunnel, but he was reaching the end of his mortal life.
Once you reach the end of the tunnel, his mind was trying to convince him, you’re dead, because that’s exactly what Heaven should look like.
Another sobering thought nearly stopped him in his tracks:
And what makes you think you’re going to Heaven, with the blood of twenty thousand robbed and murdered souls on your hands?
Suddenly, Richard knew why Gustave had abandoned him. He knew that God would exact retribution from Richard after he saved Saladin with the Grail. He knew all along what was going to happen.
And ran from his role in it.
Chapter Fourteen
They were still in the tunnel, which had widened considerably at this point. Still a distance from the end of the tunnel and the rock wall, Richard slowed his pace and the others followed suit. All talking ceased, and the last steps along the remainder of the corridor were done in utter silence as Richard believed that he was heading for Saladin’s life, and his own death.
As Richard drew near to the end of the tunnel, along the wall of snow and ice, the scene before him became clearer and clearer. They were coming upon, from all indications, a rock cavern. His heart began to beat wildly, as if this had to be the end of the quest for the Holy Grail.
When he and his men reached the end of the tunnel, Richard simply stood there in stark amazement. He was right, it was a huge rock cavern, forming a sort of dome.
He didn’t think, though, that it was the unusual rock cavern that was causing his and Saladin’s men to crowd around the mouth of the tunnel’s exit, from which brilliant light emanated.
And then, he saw it...the Holy Grail.
Without ever having seen it before, or ever having it described to him, or even the faintest inkling as to what it would look like, other than it was wood, Richard the Lionheart was as sure as he could be that he was looking at the Holy Grail.
In fact, it looked quite different than he expected it to look. It looked, somehow, even more majestic than he had previously imagined. It was a huge bowl on a three-pronged silver pedestal. The bowl was carved of a beautiful polished wood without a speck of dust on it. The Grail bore carvings of Hebrew writing and grapevines, animals, buildings and people’s faces.
The designs carved into the gleaming wood, teak wood, he assumed, were a labor of love and intense reverence. He did not read Hebrew and did not know what the inscriptions meant. But he did know one thing because God said, in his head, just one word in the same booming voice from his dream: Gopherwood.
And then, Richard began to understand all about Mount Ararat.
In a trembling voice, Richard said, “God just told me that the Holy Grail is made from gopherwood; cut from Noah’s Ark. That is why the Grail is here on Mount Ararat. The Ark is here, too, somewhere. And something else as well.” He paused, taking a breath. “Oh, He is speaking to my heart. Everything in this world is about threes. It is not just our Trinity, for Christians. It is wondrous and true, that everything about God, about Allah, about Yahweh—yes, the Jews are in this, too—is connected. As we are connected by human flesh and blood—Christians, Muslims, Jews—the Grail is connected to the Ark and they, too, are connected to a third great divine mystery. Mount Ararat has three divine objects and God…Allah…Yahweh…wishes us to keep them close to our hearts.”
Stunned, no one dared to speak a word. They only ga
zed at the Grail’s brilliance for it glowed in the white light—beams of light even seemed to be emanating from the lip of the cup. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind what they saw. This was it, all that they had sought.
The Holy Grail rested to the left of the rock cavern. As far as Richard could guess, they were standing at the side of the mountain, and there was another opening into the mountain, but to them, it was an exit. Richard looked around him. Yes, indeed, there was no more mountain, no more tunnel.
The King looked behind him. His men, as well as Saladin’s, were smiling, positively beaming. Saladin himself had not yet budged, and Richard thought the man looked as dead as a man could look and yet still be alive. He would have told anyone at that moment that there was no hope for the man; he was either dead or would be dead in the next moment. He had seen enough of death to know when a man’s time was coming, or, as he looked again at Saladin’s glazed eyes...when his time had come.
There was a chill in the air, but that was all. The cavern certainly looked colder than it was.
White light came from above, for the sun shone through a small opening in the rock. Beneath him, loose gravel crunched, and soon, all of his men were in the cavern, their mouths gaping at the sight before them.
Richard continued forward and his men plodded slowly and carefully across the domed cavern.
There was a feeling of eternal silence within the cavern, a silence that not even their clopping feet could break. No one spoke. When one of them coughed, the sound echoed within the rock walls, reverberating around them like the Devil’s own laughter.
Richard’s arms were finally tiring from carrying Saladin on the litter, but there were only maybe two dozen more paces before they reached the Holy Grail, and he was not going to stop and rest now. Burly Andre, his valet, on the other end of the litter, kept pace with him as they hurried toward the prize.
His eyes were transfixed by the Grail, but few thoughts floated through his mind. Mostly, he was just trying to comprehend the beauty of the artifact. And the fact that it truly existed. And that a dream had brought them all here…
