Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  The congregation were for the most part overfed and ugly as sin. Pallid and overweight, past middle age: the flower of England and France! It seemed a sad indictment. And then suddenly my eye was snagged by a figure lurking near the back. Was it the shadow of a pillar that gave the man’s face a darker cast? I craned my neck, feeling my heart thud.

  “Stop gawking!” Savaric dug me in the ribs, but his continuing complaint was interrupted by the heralds’ trumpets.

  Through the doors came the procession, led by an ermined lord bearing the gold crown on a cushion. Behind him, beneath a white silk canopy supported by four long lances borne by men in flowing robes, strode the heir to the throne, too fast for his nobles, who had to skip to keep the canopy over him. Richard, whom the English called the Lionheart, had reddish hair and a big, rangy frame. He walked with his hands at his sides, fists balled, looking like a wild animal caged in by ritual.

  The recitations of oaths were all in Latin, but in any case my mind was on the dark figure at the back of the abbey. When Reginald bent to place the golden sandals on the new king’s feet, I turned, trying to pick the man out again. It couldn’t be the Moor. How could he have got into the coronation of an English king? I remembered, though, how wily he was, how confident in his disguises, with what brazen delight he’d played the cardinal. But the space by the pillar was nothing but shadow; the figure had vanished.

  Had the Moor been there, watching? Had he seen me? I hadn’t seen him since the moment he’d walked away from us at Rye, but he was in my mind constantly. I was reminded of him by the oddest things at the oddest times. The monks’ signs at our silent dinners—tapping one finger on another for the pepper, stroking three fingers across the palm for the butter to be passed—could make me suddenly splutter with laughter, remembering his wicked subversion of the signs in the Monasteriales Indicia. The smell of wet earth brought back that night in the pit on Slaughter Moor; even the mention of an owl could make me shiver. And of course every day I touched the Nail of Treves, hidden beneath my shirt, and thought of the giver.

  It must have been him! If I didn’t follow at once I’d lose him again in the vastness of London. I made to leave, but Savaric caught me by the arm. “Stop fidgeting!”

  “I feel sick,” I lied.

  He looked at me in disgust. “Well you’ll have to hold it in till they’ve crowned him. They won’t let anyone in or out till then.”

  Through the rest of the ceremony I seethed and fretted, but I was not the only one willing the tedious ritual to be over. Suddenly Richard reached out and grabbed the crown from its gilded cushion. For a moment it looked as if he might jam the thing on his own head and be done with it, but then he thrust the crown at the archbishop, who took it and with unseemly haste set it on his head. As if this were not unsettling enough, something stirred in the gloomy air above the high altar, then flapped wildly past the archbishop’s mitre. It flitted between the pillars like a lost soul, its black wings beating demonically, returning time and again to circle over the golden crown.

  “A bat,” someone said in awe. “A bat in daytime, that’s an ill omen if ever there was one.”

  “A bat in a house is a sign of death.”

  “This isn’t a house, it’s a church.”

  “A church is God’s house.”

  “This king’s reign will bring many deaths,” someone else whispered and was told to shut up.

  More than anything else, the bat convinced my superstitious soul that the man I’d seen in the shadows was the Moor. Two dark strangers, two ignoti, intruding where they should not be. When at last they opened the doors, I wrenched myself free of Savaric’s grip and pushed through the crowd, but outside there were hundreds milling around, waiting for the king to emerge and bless them. Of the Moor there was no sign.

  Through the feast that night I found it hard to eat, even though the food was extravagant. Ridiculous, even. All manner of unnameable things stuffed inside each other, roasted with so many spices they might as well all have been chicken. I drank far more than I should have and was still feeling the effects the next day when we attended the king’s gift-giving at Westminster Hall.

  Reginald and Savaric had brought a gift for the new monarch. The choice had required much debate and I had caught enough snippets from their conversation to make me ill at ease.

  “But it’s a fake. He’ll have us beheaded.”

  “It’s not a fake. It’s as ancient as you like.”

  “It’s old, I’ll grant you, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  Savaric sighed. “Cousin, you are taking this far too literally. It represents a lost age, an age of chivalry and heroism. That will appeal to the warrior in him. He’ll cherish the gesture as much as the object. He’s his father’s son—canny and mercenary—he’ll fully understand the worth of it, and what it has cost us to give it to him in terms of its earning potential. It will be the best gift he is ever given, and he will remember us for it. Trust me on this, Reggie.”

  The conversation preyed on me, and when Savaric emerged the next day, clad in his finest and with a long bundle wrapped in his arms, I knew my instinct was right. I felt sick.

  Beneath the arching hammerbeams of the hall, the noisy carousing of the court made my head ring. One by one the barons and earls presented their gifts—chalices of crystal and plates of engraved gold; candlesticks and robes of ermine, bearskins and bolts of silk; a pair of elegant hunting dogs so fine-boned they looked as if they would fly at their quarry like hawks. When Savaric knelt to lay his gift at the king’s feet, I found myself imagining the three of us—Savaric, Bishop Reginald and myself—hoisted up on crosses like Christ and the thieves, or burned at the stake, with our guts hanging out like sausages and sizzling in the flames.

  “Behold the sword of King Arthur of the Britons, the great hero-king who stood against the pagan Saxon army and drove it back into the sea!” With a flourish, Savaric unwrapped the weapon.

  A woman laughed.

  Richard leaned forward and picked up the sword, weighed it in his hands. “How did you come by this?” he asked.

  Savaric looked to his cousin. Bishop Reginald looked at me. I studied the floor, willing one of them to speak. I could understand more of the nobles’ language than I let on, but how could they expect me, a wild boy off the Cornish moors, to speak French with a king? At last Savaric said, “This sword came from the site of the great king’s last battle in the West of England, isn’t that right, John?”

  There was no avoiding it. I looked into the face of the Lionheart, a face framed by fiery hair. A small, hard mouth tucked neatly away beneath a cropped moustache; the long chin close-coated by a wiry beard. The mouth smiled at my discomfort, but the smile didn’t reach those wintry eyes. I’d come across many men with such colouring—tawny hair, fair skin, light eyes. Red Will, for one—but where in Will it gave the sense of a man weak and not quite formed, in Richard the effect was unsettling, like a pale fire that would burn you to the bone.

  “It was retrieved from the … ah … site of the Battle of Camlann, at Slaughter Bridge on the Cornish moors,” I said in English, forcing Savaric to translate. “The battlefield is well known by the local people to be the place where Arthur fell, defending their land.”

  Savaric had to explain what and where Cornwall was in the king’s newly acquired realm. Richard asked at once if it was rich country, how many lords it had, what lands and castles and monasteries. Savaric spread his hands. “Alas, majesty, it is a poor, wild region, its people little more than savages.”

  Richard looked disappointed. Then he turned that chilly regard on me again. “And how do you know this to be the sword of the great king?” he said to me in English, shocking the life out of me—everyone said he had not a word of the language.

  My guts crawled. “I didn’t, lord. I … ah … that is, we, ah … were looking for old bones that might be sold as relics. To the monasteries and suchlike. They pay well for these things, even if they know they’re not rea
l.” Beside me I sensed Savaric flinching. But still I carried on, pinned by the king’s cold gaze. “People believe such objects can work miracles.” I stood condemned by my own mouth, waiting for judgment to fall. And there was no Moorish magician this time to save me with his cunning tricks.

  Savaric started to speak, but the commanding woman sitting beside the new king said sharply, “Assez!” Everyone fell silent. She wasn’t a hag, but neither was she a young woman. Her skin was lined and seamed, especially round her thin lips, but her eyes were sharp and bright and full of life, as if a witch had swallowed up a maid. She leaned forward. “This lad is sharper than the rest of them put together! People believe such objects can work miracles. And the Church gets fat on the back of lies and deception.” She turned her gimlet stare upon Bishop Reginald, who quailed. “Well, there’s nothing new in that.” Now she regarded the king steadily. “Belief is a powerful thing, perhaps the most powerful thing of all. Belief is very useful to those who wield power. Tell me, Richard, when is a sword not just a sword?”

  “You speak in riddles, Mother!”

  Mother? So this was the she-wolf Eleanor. Wife to two kings, soldier of God. There was something terrifying about her—steelier even than the Abbess of Wilton. And suddenly you could see where he’d got that small, hard mouth from.

  The thin lips curved into the semblance of a smile. “The people need heroes as a focus for their belief, and a hero needs a legendary weapon. Saint George used the lance known as Ascalon to slay his dragon; Perseus used Harpe to behead the Medusa; Charlemagne bore Joyeuse, the Sword of Earth; and Roland carried Durendal, the very same sword Hector carried at Ilium, if you believe the troubadours.”

  Richard grinned his lion-grin. “You put the scholars to shame.”

  “The sword this ancient king used to scourge the unbelievers from these shores confers an almost magical aura upon the man who bears it. But it must have a name.”

  “Caliburnus.” I turned, and there was Archbishop Baldwin, scrawny as a chicken in his oversized robes. “In his silly tales Geoffrey of Monmouth named the ancient king’s sword Caliburnus.”

  “In Cornwall we know it as Excalibur,” I blurted.

  The Lionheart raised his eyebrows. I didn’t know who was more surprised that I should have the gall to enter the discussion—the king or me—but he let it pass. “Excalibur,” he said quietly. He brushed his hand along the ancient blade, caressed the pitted hilt with its decorated quillons. Then he wrapped it back in its cloth and handed it to a servant. “Tell the armourer to make a good copy of this sword. Not a perfect copy, but of a length better suited to my reach. He’ll know what is needed.” He puffed his chest out, threw back his mane. “I shall carry it into battle against the heathen horde, just as Arthur did. We shall forge a new legend.” He looked to his mother for approval, but she just glimmered at him.

  “I have another riddle for you: when is a piece of wood not just a piece of wood?”

  Richard folded his arms and waited.

  “When it is the wood on which our lord Jesus Christ was crucified, that the blessed Helena excavated out of Jerusalem, where now stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shamefully fallen into the hands of the infidel.”

  Richard laughed. “The True Cross! Wrapped in gold and studded with gems!”

  “It is not the rich casing that makes it valuable,” Baldwin said sharply. “It is Christ’s Rood, the Wood of Life—the Lignum Vitae!”

  “Quite so,” agreed Eleanor. She turned a shoulder, shutting the annoying archbishop out of their conversation. “It may just be a piece of old wood, but it is not the gold that encases it nor the jewels that encrust it that make it valuable. It is the symbolic value it bears—”

  Archbishop Baldwin could not help interrupting. “It is the cross on which Christ suffered his passion, on which he was crucified to save our souls—”

  “Its symbolic value is what matters,” Eleanor went on severely. “The appearance of things is important. I look at you, my son, and I see a handsome, well-made man. But a man, just a man. Put a crown on that head and you have a king. Put that sword in that hand and you have a hero.” And now her eyes narrowed and her sharp chin jutted so that she looked the witch many had named her. “Let him ride into battle against the Saracen horde and take back from them the one True Cross, the holiest relic in Christendom … let him take that in his hands and you have not just a king, not just a hero,” and here she dropped her voice almost to a whisper, “but an emperor, maybe even the Holy Roman Emperor …”

  “Mother!”

  She spread her hands, sat back. “I jest. Well, a little. But my point remains. Recapture the True Cross, my son, and the whole Christian world will open to you as easily as a whore spreads her legs.”

  I gazed around to see if anyone else had heard this extraordinary exchange, but everyone was talking and drinking. Even the archbishop had a large goblet in his claw-like hand. Reginald was looking at the ground in a thoughtful manner. I caught Savaric’s eye. Out of sight of the rest, he gave me a lupine grin, well pleased with reception of the sword.

  The feasting and gift-giving continued. Much wine was drunk and the noise in the hall became ever more oppressive. When a delegation of Jews brought their gifts through the crowd, insults broke out, followed by pushes and shoves and laughter.

  “Go away, you dogs!” one lord cried.

  The Jews filed in in their dark robes, dignified and quiet. They had brought sumptuous offerings—golden candlesticks and chains of office, caskets of jewels and crystal goblets. The king wanted the gold and ordered the guards to let them through. The nobles, full of drink and bile, catcalled and jeered, and as soon as the Jews had presented their offerings they were shoved rudely out of the great hall.

  “I’ll see you back at the abbey,” I told Savaric, meaning Bermondsey Abbey where we were staying, east down the river on the other side of London’s bridge.

  A large crowd had gathered outside in the hope of catching sight of the king. Clearly, they’d been waiting for hours; the mood was ugly. Seeing the Jews expelled by the guards they took it as a sign of the new sovereign’s shared loathing, for a knot of the black-garbed men was surrounded by a baying mob.

  “Filthy moneylenders!”

  “Christ-killers!”

  It was beginning to sound like All Hallows—demons’ voices raised in chorus. And then, without warning, insults turned to blows. Fists and clubs rained down on men who had come only to honour the Lionheart.

  “Get out of our country!” others howled. “Bloody foreigners! Thieving devils!”

  I remembered the Moor telling me how one man makes of another a stranger in order to render him an enemy he can kill without conscience. How, before he encouraged me to think for myself, I was so ready to believe that Saracens ate babies …

  I couldn’t just walk past. A young man in a black robe was bent double in front of me. I pushed away a brawny fellow with a stick. “Gerr’an! Leave him alone!” I cried.

  The bully glared at me. Then his lip curled. “Another fucking Jew!” he sneered, and too late I realized my error. I’d fallen into my native Cornish tongue.

  “I’m no Jew!” I cried, though something in me felt wrong to say it.

  It didn’t do me any good: they beat the two of us indiscriminately, till I could no longer fight but lay on the ground amid the filth, curled up to protect my vitals, while the man down beside me stopped even grunting in pain.

  Had Savaric not come out of the hall at that very moment and roared with his patrician voice for the guards to intervene I’d surely not have survived. Many didn’t, that evil night.

  The violence spread, they told me after, from Westminster into Old Jewry, that collection of streets to the west of the White Tower where the Jews live and where they bury their dead, and there were many dead that day. Those who survived retreated into their houses, but the mob set fire to the ghetto, and when the inhabitants ran out into the streets with their clothes aflame, they we
re set upon by a baying crowd and torn apart—men, women and children, it made no difference.

  They say that night the sky was lit as with an orange fire, as if Heaven witnessed the burning and held a mirror to it for shame.

  15

  City of Akka

  Zohra was coming from saying prayers at her mother’s grave when the baker from the corner came running past the cemetery. “The Franj are coming!” he cried, great floury patches on his cheeks where he had clutched his face in horror.

  “Not now,” she said, aghast, but he had already run on to spread the panic. She subsided onto a patch of weeds beside the cemetery wall. How could life be any worse than these past few days had been? She had not slept, so tormented was she by flashbacks. The yellow cushion bearing the imprint of Nima’s mouth. The single bloody handprint on the frame of the terrace door. Her father covered in blood, his eyes like dark holes in a mask of gore. The prized black dewlap lying dead in his hands. The smashed and overturned cages, the drifts of feathers and spattered blood. Kamal, pale and bloodstained, running away …

  Her little brother had not come home. A neighbour reported that Kamal’s friend, Bashar Muallem, had disappeared as well. “And good riddance,” the man had added darkly.

  The atmosphere in the house was unbearable. Baltasar could not look at Aisa without oozing tears; as a result, poor Aisa crept about the house as if he wished he could vanish like his twin. And Zohra blamed herself for everything. If she had been at home, where she should have been, looking after Ummi, her mother would still be alive, and so would Baba’s pigeons, and Kamal’s unstable, dangerous nature would be something still to be guessed at, and they would still be a family and not this ragged bundle of hurt bound together by guilt and need. It was God’s punishment on her.

  And now the Franj had come. She hoped Malek had made it back to camp safely. To lose him as well … she shook her head.