Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  “I am not a Saracen,” the Moor said.

  By the time we were ready to set off it was almost summer, though you’d never have guessed it. As we crossed the River Parrett, a freezing wind blew horizontal rain in across the Somerset Levels, soaking us to the skin. The Bridgwater docks were busy, but the workers showed little interest in the show, and the grim weather kept most folk indoors, so there were blessed few to witness the shambles of our first public performance.

  Having missed his cue, then forgotten his single line, Quickfinger stumbled off the edge of the stage, blinded by his helmet, and with unerring aim fell on top of a well-built woman, who went down under him like a capsized ship. Her husband beat Quickfinger off her, a fight broke out, and Savaric’s steward was robbed of his purse in the ensuing melee. No one could be induced to take the cross, and the few who had let curiosity overcome the rain suddenly drifted away as soon as the collection pots came out.

  I looked at the Moor. “Christ’s breath in a bottle, we’re all going to hang!”

  The players were searched, but of the steward’s missing purse there was no sign.

  The next day, after travelling to the wool town of Taunton, the sun came out and we put on a better display. We came away having signed fifteen young men with the cross, much to the distress of their wives and mothers.

  We were rewarded by a stay at the local Benedictine priory, during which time the Moor and I went carefully through the troupe’s possessions until the purse turned up in Ned’s boot. Miraculously, the second morning, after mass at the high altar, the steward found his purse again, caught in the deep hem of his cloak. Savaric apologized to us all, though it was clear he was suspicious. Later we took Ned outside and delivered a painful reminder of the rules of the contract. That evening, his bruised ribs well strapped, Ned was surly but biddable, like a chastened donkey, but in the days that followed I sometimes caught him watching me through narrowed eyes.

  Under the shadow of Rougemont Castle at Exeter, we managed a roistering performance, after which the bishop led the faithful in prayer and launched into an exhortation to action. Savaric then took over the stage, telling in ringing tones how that chief devil of the enemy, Saladin, had broken down the holy walls of the city and massacred the good Christians within. How babies were murdered one by one.

  Out charged Ned, in blackface, with several ragdoll babies threaded onto his lance. “Ten thousand heads were severed! Blood ran through the streets in a torrent. Those who did not flee or were put to the sword were barricaded into churches and burned alive, their souls carried to Heaven in a pillar of smoke!” He squatted by a make-believe fire formed by blowing red and orange silk scraps with a bellows and pretended to roast and eat the babies, and a woman in the crowd fainted. The Moor had been persuaded against his conscience to put his knowledge of chemistry to good use and now burned minerals in a brazier out of the sight of the crowd so that a great cloud of green smoke swirled up. People gasped, never having seen anything like it before.

  In the end they were queuing up to take the cross—young men and old, singly and in roistering groups. One mother came rushing out of the crowd at the sight of her son being signed on the forehead by the bishop and dragged him away by his belt. “What will I do on my own, with your father gone?”

  “It is his duty, goodwife,” Savaric roared. “Let him go, and be thankful you have raised him well enough that he can repay his debt to God, king and country!”

  She would not to be put off. “My Alfred is in the ground for king and country, I will not lose my boy Jamie as well.”

  There were sympathetic murmurs in the crowd. Savaric took a determined step forward. “Madam, we passed through Taunton a few days back and a woman there tried to deny us her son. The next day she was struck deaf and blind.”

  You could see the fear in her eyes. Reluctantly, she let go of the lad’s belt and burst into noisy tears.

  Savaric took the lad firmly by the arm. Every soul counted; each carried a handsome price. A moment later, the clerk wrote his name in the register: if he defaulted now, he would end up flogged and in gaol. The boy—barely thirteen, by the look of him—bowed his head and tramped away, but the euphoria had ebbed: we took no more converts that day, though donations kept flowing.

  Later, when no one else could hear, I said to the Moor, “Do they really eat babies? The Saracens?” It was a serious question I had been pondering for days, but he looked at me as if I’d lost my wits.

  “Do you eat babies?”

  I recoiled. “Of course not.”

  “And yet there would be more truth in accusing your people of being cannibals.”

  “What?”

  “You eat the body of your god. Wafer and wine: body of Christ, blood of Christ.”

  “That’s different!”

  He said no more, just gave me a look, and walked away.

  More lies, I thought. It was all we did: peddle lies.

  7

  Maybe my doubts infected the other players, because our performances gradually lost conviction, and by the time we got to Crewkerne, takers for the cross were so reluctant we had to resort to spiritual blackmail to get them started, reminding them of the eternal punishments of Hell that await sinners: of the fires and tortures, the demons and succubi. Then we sent Hammer amongst the crowd with his hair and beard whitened with flour and wrinkles drawn on with charcoal. When Savaric roared, “Will no one here heed the call of Christ?” Hammer stepped forward and bleated, “I would gladly do so, sir, were I forty years younger!”

  He was invited to come up to the front to touch the bones of the saints, and as he bent to do so, the Moor sent up a flash of light that had the audience reeling and blinking, and in the confusion Mary hastily wiped Hammer’s face and beard with a wet cloth and he sprang upright, hale and twenty-three once more, and declared that he was willing to take on Saladin and his army singlehanded.

  After that, everyone wanted to touch the bones, and we signed another thirty.

  In Salisbury people were keener to donate money than to go to war, even when Mary went amongst them handing out distaffs of wool to the able-bodied, saying they were good only for the work of women. Even this didn’t shame them, and in the end we resorted to offering an amnesty to the prisoners in the local gaol. Bribed with a decent lunch and the promise of atonement for their sins, they were released as long as they took the cross and whipped up the crowd. Unfortunately a number of them escaped.

  Savaric shrugged. Their names were in the register, and it was on the numbers he’d be judged and rewarded. “If they’re caught, we’ll sign them up twice.” His cousin clucked his tongue disapprovingly.

  We moved on to Wilton, the largest town in the region, which boasted a fine abbey that the bishop wished to visit because it was reputed to house not only the bones of a major saint but also a nail from the True Cross. “I hear they paid a hundred pounds for it,” he said in awe.

  The Moor and I exchanged glances. We had sold two such nails, to the abbeys at St. German’s and Tavistock, on our journey north, but it seemed we had undercharged.

  On our way we also sold: some straw from the stable in which the Christ child was born; a bottle of Christ’s breath; a flask of Mary Magdalene’s tears; the strap of Saint Peter’s sandal. It was amazing what people would buy from two indigent priests newly arrived from the Holy Land.

  The Abbess of Wilton had a sharp eye and an impressive bosom. She greeted Bishop Reginald warmly, but Savaric she looked up and down, taking in his sumptuous robes and conspicuous chain. She said, “I’ve heard about you,” then pursed her lips primly.

  When the Moor was introduced, he placed his hand on his heart and bowed deeply. She was immediately charmed. They walked together and shared a long conversation about herbs and their uses, and yet again I marvelled at his ability to find common ground with everyone he met.

  After supper in the abbey’s refectory, the abbess boomed, “I shall now take our guests to see the Nail of Treves and the
bones of Saint Edith.”

  “Wilfrida, the mother of our blessed Saint Edith, was forcibly abducted from this very abbey by King Edgar,” she recounted. “He got a daughter on her, but she refused to marry him. Her piety so moved the king that as penance he did not wear his crown for a full seven years.

  “Wilfrida returned to Wilton, and it was here that young Edith grew up and took the veil. In turn she became abbess here. Great marriages she was offered, lands, riches and powerful alliances, but she preferred a life dedicated to God and the protection of our abbey.” A secret smile stole across her face, as if she thought herself a very Edith.

  We walked a little way in silence. Overhead, a barn owl ghosted on outstretched white wings. We heard its screeching call as it disappeared into the moon-touched trees. I shivered, but that might have been because the Moor’s hand brushed my own.

  Inside a pretty, well-made church, we found the shrine to Saint Edith: of solid gold, artfully ornamented, huge. Savaric gasped, then said aloud what we were all thinking. “It must be worth a fortune.”

  The abbess placed her hands on the shrine in a proprietary fashion. “Within a week of Edith’s death, miracles were being proclaimed in her name. People had visions of her breaking the Devil’s head! King Canute himself endowed Wilton Abbey with this excellent shrine.”

  “Well, what a very warlike saint!” Savaric chortled. “Clearly, we need Saint Edith with us to take back Jerusalem.”

  The abbess gave him a look that suggested she would like to break his head.

  The Nail of Treves, by contrast, was rather less impressively housed, in a clear glass phial mounted in a small silver reliquary, yet I noticed that while the rest of us were transfixed by the huge slab of gold surrounding the good Saint Edith, the Moor was drawn by the more modest relic. His face had a sly, closed look. Or perhaps it was just an effect of the jittering candle nearby.

  “This is Egyptian rock crystal, a thousand years old,” the Moor said softly, gazing at the phial.

  The abbess came to his side. “It is very ancient,” she replied, “but I do not know whence it came.”

  “I have seen perfume sold in the markets of Cairo in phials just like this.”

  “It is not the container that is valuable,” she admonished him, “but the content. That is one of the nails used in the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  “The Church of San Salvatore in Spain has some of the bread with which Isa Christ fed the five thousand,” he said, pretending a great interest in this piece of infidel lore. “By divine intervention it remains miraculously fresh, and the two pieces of broiled fish from that same feast have no stink to them. The church also boasts the dice used by the Roman soldiers at Golgotha to cast lots for Isa’s tunic—though the garment itself is kept by the cathedral in Trier.”

  As we walked back to the nunnery, he continued to regale the abbess with tales of some of the more extraordinary sacred objects he had come across in his travels, while Bishop Reginald and his cousin, troubled by the sight of so much gold, talked in low voices about the need for us to raise our game as we continued towards London.

  After Compline I lay dozing, unable to fall asleep. Even though this place was a nunnery, I still found myself uncomfortable. The pallet I lay on appeared to be vermin-free and was covered with good wool. Nor did the snores of others disturb me too much; sleeping men can’t do you much harm. But my senses were always on alert in a dormitory. I couldn’t help it—fifteen years of needful vigilance will do that to a man.

  So when the Moor slipped out of his bed and padded catlike across the floor, I was instantly awake. When he reached the door, he looked back to see if he had attracted attention, then lifted the latch with such stealth that I was confirmed in my suspicion that he was up to no good.

  I watched the door close behind him and for a moment lay still, heart pounding. He wouldn’t like to be followed. For a few seconds longer, I stayed, fighting my curiosity. Then I crawled out from under the blankets and went after him, my leather socks silent on the flagstones.

  Outside it was dark, the moon hidden by clouds. It took a long moment for my eyes to make out his tall, straight figure disappearing through the arch in the courtyard wall, heading towards the chapel.

  The shrine! Was he going to try to carve a piece off the reliquary, or to stagger away with the whole thing? You could never sell a piece of gold that large. But then I thought about the woods behind the chapel, the barn owl’s destination: where there were woods there were always charcoal burners, and charcoal burned hot enough to melt gold. You could divide it into portions, bury what you could not carry, take what you could to sell to a goldsmith somewhere far enough away to avoid suspicion—Bristol, say, or London, where there must surely be other dark-skinned foreigners like the Moor and he could pass for a gold merchant.

  I quickened my pace. When I reached the chapel the door was closed. I twisted the round iron handle. The devil! He had locked it from the inside. A hot surge of jealous fury rushed through me. I banged on the door. “Open up! It’s me, John!”

  There was a deathly hush, then soft footsteps. The grate of iron on iron. The door opened and with a single, swift action I was caught by the collar and dragged painfully inside. The door clicked shut again. The Moor turned the key in the lock; we were together in the gloom.

  “What are you doing following me?” His black eyes blazed.

  “I … ah … I thought you were stealing the shrine. I thought you were leaving me behind …”

  His grip relented. Then he started to laugh, soundlessly, a breathy rush and catch of air. “You really must think me some sort of magician, habibi. Look.” He opened his hand. I saw what looked like one of the old nails we had dug up in the pit on the moors and sold along the way. But no, it was not one of those small nails. It was as long as the palm of his hand. It was the Nail of Treves.

  “What are you doing? Put it back!”

  “I needed to see it again,” he said. He leaned past me and unlocked the door, stuck his head out, looked around. “Go back to bed. I will come back in a little while. It wouldn’t do to be seen together.”

  The corners of his mouth curled up—a private joke. When I hesitated, he ducked his head, kissed me once, firmly, on the lips, then pushed me back out into the night.

  And so back to the dormitory I went, feeling like a fool.

  My lips burned as if brushed by flame.

  8

  King Henry imposed a tax requiring that every man give one-tenth of all his income and goods to the war effort. The “Saladin tithe” it was known as. The only way to avoid paying it was to take the cross.

  The mood was ugly wherever we went. People were taking to the forests to avoid the tax collectors, and as we passed through Eartham Wood near Arundel we were set on by bandits. Hammer clubbed two attackers and sent a third away dragging his foot. Saw fought with a dagger in each hand. Little Ned produced, as if from nowhere, a pair of small throwing knives and dispatched another two of the bandits in quick succession as they bore down upon Savaric and his jewelled chain. Quickfinger charged after the fleeing men, bellowing his own name—“Enoch Pilchard! Enoch Pilchard!”—which alarmed them mightily. He came back with a small purse from which he removed a couple of coins. He then tossed it to Mary, who stowed it away in her cleavage. Interesting. I wondered how long they had been a couple.

  Over the following days I noticed that Mary looked at Quickfinger more often than he looked at her, and that Will watched them both sourly. Will put his hands on Mary in the rape scene in such a way that she fought him off for real. One day the Moor stepped in, the peacemaker as usual. “Time for a change of roles,” he suggested. “Why don’t you take Will’s place, Michael?”

  The Hammer looked dubious.

  “Ye shud mak ’im t’wench.” Quickfinger grinned nastily at Will. “ ’E’ll mak a reet gud un.” He pursed his mouth into a simper until there was a wicked resemblance to the minstrel.

  Will’s face wen
t purple. Then he put his head down and charged at Quickfinger. Just before Will’s skull looked set to make contact, Quickfinger stepped aside and Will barrelled into Hammer instead, who was bowled over. He was a small man, Hammer, but wiry and tough. He sprang to his feet and held Will’s flailing arms easily to stop him going after Quickfinger.

  Will’s eyes were red and there was snot dripping from his nose. “You don’t love her!” he shrieked at Quickfinger. “You don’t care about her at all!”

  Mary folded her arms. “Shut up, Will,” she barked.

  Will was openly crying now, the tears running down his chin. “He … he … he lies with other women. Wherever we go, he goes sniffing after a new one!” He stared at Mary, his eyeballs bulging with desperation. “He’s … he’s … a fucking pig!”

  No one had ever heard Will swear. It was his prissiness more than anything else that made him so disliked by the others.

  Quickfinger was grinning like a fiend. “I canna help it if all the wenches chase me.” He waggled his hips obscenely till the rest squawked with laughter. “Word goes round, y’know how ’tis. They all want a piece.”

  Mary’s face went still. Her eyes sparked fire as she looked from one man to the other. “You’re all a load of pricks and I want nothing to do with any of you. Fuck off, Enoch.” Gathering her skirts, she stalked away, more the lady than we had ever seen her.

  Will slept apart from the rest of us that night and looked so forlorn that the very sight of him set Quickfinger and the twins to laughing. At last, the Moor took him aside, and after that we dropped the rape scene from the mumming, but whatever camaraderie had glued the group together had been lost.

  Mary turned her back angrily on Quickfinger when he tried clumsily to make amends. She talked only to the Moor and to Little Ned, and then not much. She was coolly polite with me. I missed the Plaguey Mary of old, with her ribald wit and devil-may-care ways, and all of a sudden I could see she was older than I had thought.