Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  We had to feel our way along the wall, for we could not risk a light. Kamal located the tunnel and we ducked inside into utter darkness. It was so narrow we had to go in single file: first our guide, then me, then Quickfinger, Hammer, Ned and finally Will.

  I have never liked enclosed spaces. It comes of living wild on the moors with no roof but the sky, and of being trapped in the chapel with the door shut and no way out. It was a relief to emerge on the other side, even if it was into an enemy town. We came out into some sort of cellar, cavernous but man-made. Even in the dark I could feel the space around me, and when I squinted I could just make out a great branching arch of brickwork overhead.

  “Which way now?”

  He pointed upwards.

  We ran up stairs, our steps echoing forlornly through empty corridors and halls, and eventually emerged into a wasteland. All around were the shells of abandoned or burned out buildings, crumbling, weed-covered, blasted.

  Kamal, shaken out of his usual torpor, gazed about, his eyes like the holes in the masonry. He muttered something to himself.

  “What?”

  “Everyone gone.” He gestured to an uninhabited house on the right. Roofless, now; the door hanging by one hinge. “Bashar family lived there. And next Ahmed the shoemaker, wife and daughters.” He turned at the junction with a narrow alley and paced towards it. It was lightless, lifeless. Not even a rat stirred.

  We were all sobered: this was what a two-year siege reduced a city to. And in the background, a dull rumble, the attack on the walls went on.

  Kamal had us put our hoods up and walk apart from one another so that if we were to encounter anyone we would be less conspicuous. “You two hold hands,” he told Will and Quickfinger.

  “Why?”

  Kamal frowned. “Is what cousins do here.”

  “We aren’t cousins,” said Will, at the same time as Quickfinger muttered, “Fook that.”

  “Friends, brothers, cousins, what it matter?” The boy’s eyes sparked with something—anger?—but in the end we left Hammer and Ned lurking at the back, with Will on his own in the middle.

  Quickfinger and I walked alongside Kamal, who strode quickly, head down, as if he feared to be recognized. Why would a man leave his hometown, returning only as a traitor, to bring enemies within its walls? It was a question I should have asked before. But it was rather too late now.

  We reached a junction where the road gave out onto a larger highway, and we got an up-close sight of the enemy. As yet we’d seen only their soldiers—you didn’t have the luxury of taking in the humanity of their features when you were trying to avoid being split in two.

  “They’re like walking corpses,” Red Will said in a horrified whisper.

  Even Quickfinger was shocked. “I thought we had it bad.”

  I remembered what the Moor had said about lack of imagination being necessary to those who conducted a war, and suddenly I feel dirty and ashamed. That day I had eaten meal porridge and bean stew with a hunk of salt beef, a tankard of ale and some stale bread, and complained. I was part of a Christian army that had brought starvation to these people, and for what? Some golden city none of us had ever seen, heart of a religion that had done nothing but oppress us with a fear of punishment beyond death. In the face of such obvious suffering, going in to search for a bauble like the True Cross seemed an obscenity.

  We found the gates to the citadel missing. “Taken to be melted down for weapons, mebbe,” Quickfinger said.

  “Where are the guards?” I whispered to Kamal.

  He shrugged. “Dead. Or on wall.”

  “Who’d leave a great treasure unguarded?”

  He glanced at me, and the quarter moon was reflected in his eyes so that he looked inhuman: like a demon or a risen spirit. “You cannot eat gold.”

  Kamal led us to a ramble of buildings that must once have been stables, judging by the stale, animal smell. Of the horses there was no sign—no doubt long since eaten. We crossed a yard strewn with wisps of old straw to a side door. Kamal pushed at it but it stayed closed. He ducked and put his eye to a small hole on the right, then took a hooked stick from his belt and poked it through, fiddled; then with a click we heard the latch lift.

  We passed through arched doorways and along deserted corridors decorated with carved plaster friezes until we reached a staircase and heard voices. Kamal waved us back. We ducked inside the first darkened room, glimpsing opulence within: Turkish carpets, silk hangings, vases that gleamed in the gloom. There we waited, with the door closed to a crack. Soon light spilled along the bottom of the door; footsteps passed, the sound of them diminishing second by second until at last Kamal stuck his head out, then beckoned us to follow. At the staircase, once again he gestured for us to stay in the shadows while he checked the next floor. He ran fleetly up the steps without making a sound, disappeared down a corridor. We waited, trying to still our breathing. And waited.

  I found myself frowning. Had he abandoned us?

  “Little bastard,” Quickfinger hissed. “Where is he?”

  I put a finger to my lips and watched the balustrade above as if by sheer will I could make our guide reappear. At long last there was movement, and then Kamal waved us up, quickly, quickly. Up the stairs we went; even with care our boots were scuffing and our breath hissing. There were lights lit up there. Kamal led us past gorgeously decorated rooms stuffed with rich furnishings. Hammer and Ned stared in avariciously; Quickfinger licked his lips, looked shifty. One moment he was there, the next he had ducked inside, only to re-emerge seconds later with a fat silver candlestick in his fist. “Booty,” he whispered cheerfully.

  At last the boy stopped outside a pair of grand doors. “Wait here,” he told us. “Guard door. Kill anyone who try come in.”

  He made to turn away, but I collared him. “What are you talking about? We’re not here to kill anyone. Now, where’s the treasury?”

  “Let go. Do what I say, keffir, or I tell you nothing. You do what I say, guard door while I kill the eunuch, then I take you down find your filthy relic.”

  I did not know what he meant by the word “eunuch.” I gave him a hard shake. “You kill anyone here and we’ll have the entire garrison down on our heads! Get us to the treasury and then you can go about your own bloody business.”

  “Take hands off me, dirty infidel!”

  “Why, you little bastard!” Suddenly Quickfinger had a knife at Kamal’s throat.

  The knife seemed to give the boy strength. He twisted like a rat and was out of my grip and into the room.

  Of all the chambers I had seen, this was the richest—candles and sconces illuminated pillars joined by horseshoe arches, and at the far end of the chamber were two men. One lay on the couch. He was fat: even recumbent, his belly stuck up like a hill. The other was pressing a cloth over his eyes, bent over him, his back to the door. Neither saw Kamal as he darted out of the shadows. From one pillar to the next he ran, ducking behind carved furniture, slipping between billowing silks. A glint as something caught the candlelight: from somewhere two daggers appeared in his hands, even though he had been searched thoroughly before we left. I recognized the weapons—Little Ned would be feeling two blades lighter.

  I opened my mouth but the shout that echoed through the room was Kamal’s: a warbling battle cry. As he launched himself at the man on the couch, the other man turned. Seeing the assassin, he threw himself between Kamal and the man on the couch, hands grabbing for the daggers. He caught one wrist, but the assassin’s second hand snaked out of his grasp. With a twisting move as elegant as an acrobat’s, Kamal bent away from the man who had got between him and his target. His free arm arced down and in a flash embedded the blade in the other’s side. Connected now at two points, the pair staggered together in a clumsy dance. A tray clattered off a side table. The man on the couch sat up, groaning, pulling the cloth from his face. Seeing the assassin tangling with the man who had been tending him, he yelled fit to wake the dead.

  “Shit!” sai
d Little Ned. “That’s done for us.” He turned and legged it down the corridor, and the rest of the troupe pounded after him. But without our guide, what chance had we of finding the cross, let alone getting ourselves out of this maze of a city?

  Cursing, I strode into the room. I made it to the first set of pillars in time to see the fat man leap from the couch with far greater agility than any man so corpulent had a right to possess. From somewhere, a scimitar had appeared in his hand and it scythed down.

  “No!” I shouted.

  But it was too late: as the wounded man tried to hold Kamal at bay, his hands scrabbling at the assassin’s wrists, blood pouring from him, the blade of the scimitar sheared through the muscles of the boy’s back, and down he went, with the other man beneath him.

  I came to a dead halt and the fat man stared at me, now resembling not at all a soft glutton, his eyes like agates. Without taking his gaze off me, he kicked the assassin hard. Getting no response, he set a foot on the body and jerked his sword free and pushed the corpse so that it rolled off the dying man, who tried to rise. He got as far as his knees before crumpling so bonelessly that I heard his head strike the floor.

  I started to back slowly away, my eyes flitting from the bodies and the spreading pool of blood to the fat man’s scimitar. Then I heard voices behind me and turned to find two large, bearded men coming through the door.

  The fat man cried something that sounded like “Hash shash een!” and the men drew their swords.

  I reached around for the dagger in my belt and it got caught up in the cloak. I never was any sort of fighter. By the time I had wrestled it clear they were on me, and in any case, what could a man with a small knife do against trained soldiers wielding long blades? But as the first one raised his scimitar to cut me down his expression changed from violent intent to shock, and then he collapsed at my feet. As if in a dream, I noticed a knife in his back. A moment later the second soldier was clutching his head. Quickfinger grabbed me by the arm and hauled me away. In his other hand he carried a bloodied candlestick. Behind him was Little Ned, grinning savagely, the last of his throwing blades at the ready. This he hurled at the fat man coming for us with his scimitar. Whether it struck him or not I had no idea; we bolted for the doors. Once outside, Ned slammed them shut, and Quickfinger thrust a spear he had got from somewhere into the frame, barring them from opening from the inside. “This way!” he shouted at me as I stood there like a sleepwalker.

  We ran pell-mell down corridors and steps, feet slapping on the stone, no subterfuge left to us. At the bottom of a staircase we found Will and Hammer.

  “More guards that way!” Hammer shouted, pointing.

  “Down,” I said, remembering the assassin’s words. “We go down.”

  Hallways lined with columns, shadows between, doors closed and open, but the chambers all appeared empty: where was everyone? We turned a corner and suddenly there were rough-hewn steps leading down into darkness.

  “Stay here,” I told the others.

  At the bottom of the flight was a thick wooden door with an ornate handle. I set my hands to it, expecting it to be locked, but it gave before me and I fell inward, landing on my knees in the gloom. I looked around, my eyes adjusting quickly: a jumble of boxes, sacks, chests, fallen statues, indistinct objects.

  On hands and knees, I made my way farther in. The first box I opened contained what felt like chunks of crystal. The second was empty except for a spill of coins across its base. The third yielded a casket full of bones. Christian relics: my mouth twisted in a wry grin. I made my way back to the stairs, where Quickfinger was looking down expectantly.

  “We’re going to need some light.”

  We’d passed a lit sconce in the previous hallway: Hammer slipped off, and we saw the light of the liberated torch jagging across the walls as he came running back. The other three followed him down the steps.

  “Not you,” I told Will, placing a restraining hand on his chest. “You stay here and keep watch.”

  “Why me?”

  “I trust you to keep your eyes open,” I lied. I knew the others would disobey me. “Give me your sack. We’ll fill it for you—you’ll not lose out.”

  He gave it up with bad grace and went back up the stairs.

  By the time I re-entered the ill-named treasury, Hammer had stuck the torch in a tall vase and was opening chests at random—swearing because they were empty, or all but. Quickfinger kicked a statue and its arm fell off with a clatter. Little Ned ferreted around silently. On and on we searched, feverish in our disappointment. But a few minutes later at the back of the room I heard a cry: “By ’eck, Enoch Pilchard, you’re a rich man!”

  We crowded around the chest he had forced open and gazed in at the tumble of chalices, dishes and monstrances, church candlesticks, caskets and something that looked like a crozier. These were surely the treasures sacked from Jerusalem the Golden.

  While the lads stuffed their sacks, I went from chest to chest, feeling my way between the boxes, against the walls, where there was no light. I had reached the farthest corner of the chamber when I felt a sudden hot pain against my throat. Somehow, without noticing, I had broken the crystal that enclosed the Nail of Treves, and either a shard of the casing or the nail itself had caught in the fabric of my tunic and turned inward, pricking me hard. When I looked down, I saw a bundle wrapped in sacking, jammed against the back wall. Pulling aside the rough cloth, I saw gold gleam through the gap.

  “Bring the torch!”

  Light jumped and flared. I unwound the sacking and gasped. Huge jewels embedded in a thick casing of gold within which, visible at the shorn ends, was wood. Not new, blond wood, neatly sawed, but gnarled, dark wood almost black with age, close-grained, jagged and lighter where it had been roughly broken off. No one would wrap gold around a bit of old wood, unless …? Feeling a sudden superstitious fear, I drew back.

  Quickfinger, Little Ned and Hammer stared over my shoulder.

  “Aye, that’ll do,” Quickfinger said. The torchlight reflecting from the gold, from the rubies and the pearls, illuminated his expression of awe. He fell to his knees with his palms joined and whispered, “Sweet Jesu, forgive me my sins, of which there are many, Christ who was nailed to the cross to save our souls, have mercy on this sinner …” over and over, and for a moment—just a moment—I became a believer.

  Little Ned broke the spell, kicking Quickfinger on the thigh. “You soft bugger, get off your knees.” He looked at me. “Where’s the rest of it? You could hardly crucify a man on that, could you? Not unless he were a dwarf.”

  “It looks as if it’s been broken up,” I said, feeling uneasy. I didn’t want to touch it. I fought down my superstitious side: we had a job to do. “Come on, help me wrap this thing. We need to get out of here.”

  But even as I bent towards it, I hesitated once more. I, even I, felt something like belief tremble through me, if only for a moment. But then the candle flame guttered and I could see that it was just a piece of wood jollied up in precious metal, and when I bent to run my hand over it, I felt nothing special. I felt a profound disappointment, a falling away, like stepping into an unseen hole. Didn’t I know well enough there was no magic in this world: just grit and grime and blood and fakery? Come on, John, I told myself fiercely. Get out of here, give the wretched thing over to good King Richard and you’ll be made for life, a hero, a rich man. Yet I kept seeing the pool of blood spilling upstairs in the rich chamber.

  Quickfinger gave me that crazed grin of his, the one he used to fox those he robbed. “By ’eck,” he said. “We found the fookin’ needle in the haystack!”

  With the cloth covering up the gold, the remnant of the cross looked nondescript, but when I hefted it, by God it was heavy! I staggered and almost fell. It was almost as if it did not wish to be moved, like a mule that had dug its heels in, or a recalcitrant dog. The others were too busy cramming precious objects into their sacks to see my difficulty, and by the time we made it back up the steps we wer
e all similarly laden.

  No one stopped us as we ran through the citadel corridors. We emerged into the darkness of the gardens and still there were no guards. “Don’t run,” I told the troupe. “Don’t draw attention to yourselves.” We drew our cloaks around us and walked with our heads down into the streets.

  There was hardly anyone around. At a crossroads we came upon a child by the side of the road; as we passed he looked up, automatically put out a hand, begging. He said something in a high, reedy voice, and Red Will turned around and, digging into his sack, pulled out a charger of pure silver and thrust it into the boy’s hands.

  “What the hell are you doing?” demanded Little Ned, glaring at him as if he would like to kill him.

  Quickfinger cuffed Will around the head. “You soft idiot. He weren’t beggin’ for treasure, he were beggin’ for bread.”

  The child stared uncomprehendingly at the shining item, then cast the silver plate into the dust. A woman picked up the charger and shouted at us, and angry-looking people began to appear out of the shadows. A man grabbed Red Will and pulled his hood down, exposing his light eyes, and suddenly there was a crowd, pushing and shouting. Someone wrested the sack of booty from him and upended it, gold and jewels spilling across the ground. A few people dropped to their knees, even in their starvation lured by the tawdry thrill of gold, but the rest were intent upon the interloper.

  I saw Hammer clutch the dagger at his waist, but then he seemed to think better of it and, without a word, turned and walked smartly away.

  Red Will cried out. The crowd was pushing him from one to another now, grabbing at his clothing. There was the sound of cloth tearing and I saw his pale skin gleaming. “Franj!” someone shouted, and there was a scream, and Will went down in a flurry of fists and knives.

  With a cry of “Enoch Pilchard!” Quickfinger launched himself into the fray. He had the crozier in one hand, a dagger in the other. Like a whirling demon he set about the attackers and the crowd parted before his fury, then closed in around him.