The Prince looked up at me as I went past with a cup of hot wine for Uma. 'Ali, Eddie March has gone, then?'
'It looks like it.'
'And won't be back?'
'I doubt it.'
'March is not coming back here,' Mistress Dawtrey screamed. 'We'll end up chopped in pieces on Tower Green if he conies back here.'
She had not understood our conversation, of course, but no doubt had heard the name of March in the middle of it.
The Prince ignored her, went on: 'So, Ali, we no longer have our guide to show us the way to the north of Ingerlond.'
I assented.
'Master Dawtrey has expressed a desire that we should begone by daybreak. The question is, where shall we go? Where is there to go?'
There was an unaccustomed tremor in his voice, a hint of weariness and anxiety, fear even. It dawned on me that he was at the end of his tether: thousands of miles from home, divested of almost all the prestige of rank he was used to; bewildered by everything around him – not just his dubious position in a strange country of having allied himself to a rebel, a traitor, but the food, the language, the people, the weather. I reminded myself that I was the traveller, that I was used to situations like this, that I had no home, that Vijayanagara was as strange to me as Ingerlond. It was a consideration I had not given enough attention to, mainly because until now Prince Harihara and Anish had managed so well. But now I felt nothing would satisfy them but to return to the river, take a boat back across the water and retrace our steps to the warmth, comfort, security, and decency of their homeland. Uma sneezed.
I turned to Alderman Dawtrey and did the best I could with my limited command of his language. 'Sir,' I said, 'it is unreasonable to expect the Prince and his following to be gone by daybreak. But I think I can find people in London who will help us, if you would give me until the afternoon to organise it.'
After some blustering, largely feigned I believe to satisfy his wife, he agreed, especially when I suggested to him that he might like to take what spices and condiments we still had off our hands for a fair price so we would have money to pay our way on our journey. He offered a fifth of their street value but I got him up to a third – forty-five pounds. I was content to do this: it left us with no large load to carry, fewer mules and muleteers to hire, and we would be far less conspicuous as we travelled through the country. And, when all was said and done, the actual sum remained high: it was enough to keep us all in funds and tolerable comfort for a month or more. And after that we would still have the small bags of gems we had secreted about us.
But I still had to pursue the plan I had in mind and put it into effect – and Uma was still wearing my furs and nothing else. Although almost every man there knew she was a woman, they all believed they were the only ones in the know, so it remained advisable, and might one day turn out to be useful, that we maintained the fiction that she was a man. I murmured in her ear and followed her up the stairs (still strewn with broken ornaments, timber from the chest, and occasional gold pieces that had not yet been collected), and the two ladders to the attic she had shared with March. There, while I looked out through the hole March had made in the roof at the view of the silver river snaking beneath the setting moon in a big loop southwards to the twin towers of Westminster, she took off my furs, and resumed her monkish habit.
"Where do you plan to go?" she asked. 'Who are these allies you have found who will help us?' But she didn't wait for an answer. 'Don't bother. I can guess. I'll come too.'
And, grinning up at me, she pulled the handsome coat of sable that March had neglected to take with him over her monkish gown while I shrugged myself into my mixture of fox and musk rat, still warm and scented from her skin.
We let ourselves out quietly through the kitchen and kitchen offices, across the yard, through the gate and into East Cheap, turning right up Candlewick, over the crossing and into Budge Row. We could now see the spire of St Paul's at the end of Watling Street ahead of us, a thin needle, with the moon turning orange to the left of the tower it perched on, then we turned right.
'I know where we're going,' Uma said, and squeezed my hand. There was almost a sort of glee in her voice.
'You do?'
'You're following the signs.'
'What signs?'
'The little red hearts.'
She was right. Straight on unless, where there's a corner or a crossing, a small red heart, chalked, painted, or cut from material and fixed high up on a building, tells you to leave the street you're on and take a new turning. You couldn't really see them in the darkness but I had followed them the day before, just as I had in most of the big cities we had passed through since landing at Venice, at least when opportunity arose. Thus we made our way, just as the sky behind us began to lighten, and small birds here or there in the caves above us stirred and chirruped, and a distant dog barked, into a small warren of alleys, most too narrow to take a cart or even a donkey with two panniers. And, in effect, we moved out of the everyday illusionary world of commerce, politics, law and order, publicly approved religion into that parallel universe where most of us live some of the time, and where, when we do, we are truly human and free, the underworld of the Brothers.
In Needlcr's Lane a tiny church huddled between taller houses whose eaves spread over it, the church of St Benet Sherehog, and next to it the church of St Pancras. Both were small, not much bigger than the shrine to the elephant-headed god Ganesha in whose precincts I had been welcomed on my first visit to Vijayanagara – but, oh, so very different,
Beneath a semi-circular arch carved with devils and lost souls there was a low double door, with a knocker – a hand clasping a ball, cast in bronze, finely modelled. I struck three sharp blows with it, and then one yet heavier. We waited. A couple of black rats scurried down the alley away from us. Then bolts on the other side of the timbers slipped back, silently because they had been greased, and the circular handle tilted a little. We had heard no footsteps, neither did the hinges creak nor the bottom of the door squeal on the stone floor.
'Nothing is true," I said.
'Everything is permitted,' the cowled figure on the other side of the opening door murmured. 'Come in, Brother Ismail, and your companion too.'
He was carrying a lamp, which briefly illuminated the almost square nave he led us through, throwing dancing light across the squat pillars with their carved capitals. I had, as I have said, already been there, but in daylight. Now the crudely rendered imps, painted in primary colours, flashing their bums, sucking their genitals, looked even more startling and weird as the shadows cast by the lamp shifted over them. I could not help wondering at these images and comparing them with the sculptures one sees in Vijayanagara. There all is open and happy, here sly and grubby… but this is not the place for a dissertation on religious art except to say that the one image that did appeal was of Mary, above the altar in a side-chapel through which our guide now led us. Heavy-lidded, angel-mouthed, she was robed in deep-sea blue and crowned with silver. Her feet rested in the curve of a crescent moon, thin as a sickle-blade. Her smile was knowing – you felt she knew more than she was prepared to acknowledge.
Behind a pulpit there was a staircase that descended to another wooden door. It opened into a crypt or cellar. It was large, serving both churches, and was divided by rows of plain pillars supporting low, vaulted ceilings. It was furnished with plain stone boxes, tombs, about thirty. There was no altar. The air was fresh, a little musty but not noisome. In one comer a family of vagrants, a man, two women, three children and a dog, huddled beneath a pile ot rags and scraps of fur and pretended to be warm. Our guide sat on a tomb and set down his lamp beside him.
'This,' I said to Uma, 'is Brother Abraham, a Brother of the Free Spirit.'
'I know," she said. 'I mean, I know he is a Brother of the Free Spirit." And offered Abraham a smile of gentle complicity. He pushed back his hood, revealing a lean but pleasant face with smile lines as well as those etched by asceticism. His hair w
as lank, grey, and tonsured, but by nature rather than a razor.
In spite of the lugubriousness of his expression in repose, he smiled readily enough. He cleared his throat. 'So, what can I do for you, Brother Ismail?'
I explained what I had not told him on my first visit, how we wished to go into the north-west of the country and find Prince Harihara's brother Jehani. Uma took up the tale, of how we had had a guide, Eddie March, but he had fallen foul of the Queen's people and fled arrest by Lord John Clifford and Lord Scales and was nowhere to be found, and how our host and hostess were afraid of the Queen's people and wanted to send us on our way.
Abraham nodded all through this, stroked his bristly upper lip between thumb and forefinger.
'We have a Brother from the north-west,' he said, when we had finished, 'named Enoch. But he's a journeyman-fishmonger and he'll be working down at Fish Wharf at the end of Pudding Lane, next to Billingsgate, until midday. I can send to his house and ask his wife to send him on here as soon as he's finished. Will that do?'
Uma and I looked at each other, shrugged. 'Yes, that will do.'
There did not seem to be anything to be gained by returning to East Cheap until we had met up with this Enoch so we accepted Brother Abraham's invitation to remain in the crypt until our new guide came. We were thus tempted to indulge ourselves with holy-conversation, for Abraham was clearly an adept in the science of living. Furthermore, he was curious to learn about Vijayanagara which he quickly realised was as close to a manifestation and incarnation of the Holy City as one could hope for. It was important to him while he had the chance to hear as much as he could of Uma's native city for thus he would be strengthened in the daily struggle to remain true to his refusal of faith in the face of Church and State.
On our side, Uma and I were interested to hear how the refusal was faring in Ingerlond.
'Ali, what is all this?' I interjected.
'My dear Mah-Lo, have we not already discussed three great orders of freemen?'
'I have no idea what you are talking about. What three orders?'
'The Brothers of the Free Spirit, the Assassins who are the innermost circle of the Ismaelites and Sufis, and the Thugs?'
'The last two I had heard of before I came here, and you have said enough to imply that you have sympathies at least with the Assassins. But you make it all sound like a world-wide conspiracy.'
Ali laughed lightly. 'No such thing is possible. For the supreme tenet of all three orders is that their members should be free, obligated by one principle only: that when you meet a like-minded person in need or difficulties you help him. Conspirators require rides, plans, obedience. Obedience, of all things, is what we most detest.'
'I am none the wiser, but you had better continue with your story'. You had just asked this Abraham how things were in Ingerlond.'
'Not well.' He sighed, and shifted a little on the cold stone he was sitting on. 'In almost all places the Refusal lives in hidden places, for too many in the last fifty years have been put to the torture and burned. Yet it is true that many hold to the beliefs of John Wycliffe, even if they do follow the road he signposted for us and even if they do not openly confess their faith as their fathers and mothers did. Yet, generally speaking, a Lollard preacher, in a graveyard, outside a city's gates, even at a market cross, will draw a crowd of sympathisers, who will leave strengthened if not actually prepared to march against the King and bishops as Wat Tyler. John Ball, Jack Straw and John Cade did. And thousands with them.'
'How far, then, will they go clown the road of the free spirit?' Uma insisted.
'Oh, not far, and not beyond applying the light of good reason to the doctrines of the Church. They will deny the presence of Jesus in the sacraments, saying it is a strange god that can be lapped by dogs and eaten by mice. They can see how much against Scripture it is that priests should be able to sell forgiveness of sins, and they find the belief in Purgatory whereby the rich can buy their way into heaven through masses said for their souls abominable. They will condemn chastity in priests and monks as leading to unnatural vices, and in nuns as leading to abortion and infanticide. The more extreme declare all war to be evil, it being the murdering and plundering of the poor to win glory for kings, even the making of weapons to be evil…'
'But all this is merely nay-saying,' Uma cried. 'Do they not speculate about what can be put in the place of all the evil shit?'
'Some do in the privacy of their homes or in the company of three or four like-minded friends they can trust.' If Abraham was surprised or shocked by her vehemence, he showed it only in the soothing tone he adopted. 'For instance, they will argue that the giving of women in marriage is unjust, not out of lewdness as their enemies proclaim but because women should not be treated as chattels. Some argue that all property should be held in common, that councils where all sit together should decide what laws and customs should be followed rather than the whims of kings, lords and bishops.'
'And what sort of people turn out for the Brothers?'
'All sorts. From ploughmen to gentry, even lords. Eighty years ago, when he ruled the realm as King Richard's regent, John of Gaunt, great-grandfather of our present king, protected John Wycliffe. Lord Cobham, Sir John Oldcastle as he was before he married, continued that tradition and followed the teaching of the Lollards. He, however, was burned at the command of the present king's father, forty-five years ago. Almost worse, thanks to the cunning of the powers that be, he is now reviled as a drunken, whoreson coward, nicknamed Falstalf.'
For a moment his face was clouded with sadness. Then he went on: 'But the main reason why we thrive at present only a little, compared with a few years back, is these present troubles, these wars between the great lords. Since the plague came a hundred years ago, there have been fewer people to firm the land for them so wages have gone up and prices have dropped. Therefore the lords covet each other's land and instead of settling the disputes in courts or Parliament or by the King's command, they fight. And that means any able-bodied man can get a good day's wage wearing the livery of his master with the prospect, if he's on the winning side, of loot, booty, a share of ransom money, even land of his own or a tenancy. If he's on the losing side he just runs away and lives to fight another day. Also, because of these wars, outside London and the big cities law and civil society have broken down. There is nothing to rebel against and every chance of bettering oneself in the crude, brute anarchy that exists. Since anarchy of a sort is already with us there-is no point in striving and risking death at the stake for the higher anarchy that might ennoble us all.'
And so we went on through the last heavy dark hours before dawn until the sun rose and with it the less than heavenly city: we could hear the clopping of hoofs, the bleat of sheep driven to the shambles, the squeal of cart-wheels, the shouts and calls of street-sellers, the general hubbub of the great wen, that weeping boil, in whose innermost heart we now were hidden.
It was about then that Brother Abraham told us just how holy was the spot in which we sheltered, dedicated as half of it was to the boy saint St Pancras, a bone of whose finger was kept in a reliquary in the second of the two tiny churches. It was, he said, the first church founded in Albion by St Augustine and the spot chosen for it was the site of a shrine that predated even the great Julius Caesar who built the Tower. This shrine or temple, as old as the henges in the west, belonged, so Abraham's account had it, to King Lud who built the city around it and was indeed no king but a river god.
The family of beggar-folk got themselves up and discreetly, silently, slipped away up the stone stairs. Now we could see them properly, divested of their rags and threadbare blankets, they revealed themselves from the darkness of their skin, darker than mine, almost as dark as Uma's, to be gypsies. I wondered where the rest of their tribe were and why they had separated from them.
The noise came and went in waves as folk opened the doors above and came in to make offerings or prayers to the image we had seen in the side-chapel: the Mother, Mary. Is
is, Ishtar, Parvati. Below the stone floor our talk continued as we awaited the arrival of Enoch the fishmonger, and returned to the concept, the vision, of the Perfect Society that dominated our thoughts and longings. Abraham especially dwelt on Ingerlond before the Normans came: it had been, he said, rural and village-based, yet in its way as happy and blessed as the Heavenly City all three of us looked towards and which Vijayanagara represented, in much the same way as its emperor and empress are avatars for the gods Vishnu and Parvati.
We also speculated about the way the same light and knowing-ih-ss had come to each of us and our fellow hierophants but by such different routes and out of such alien beginnings.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In East Cheap a letter awaited me.
Ali
Shortly after your departure early this morning Alderman Dawtrey was honoured with a visit by Lord Scales, Constable of the Tower. He is a forceful old man and came accompanied by a troop of men-at-arms. He was of a mind to grant Anish, the few servants we have left and myself more comfortable rooms than the Alderman can supply, but in the Tower, which apparently is not merely a fortress but a royal palace too.
He is angry that we accepted hospitality from Richard Neville and Edward March in Calais and that we connived in March's escape last night. However, I pointed out to him that Anish and I had had very little to do with any of this, being guided entirely by the only member of our party who knew anything about Ingerlond – namely you. I think he understood.
Things will turn out all right for us – we have money from the sale of our goods, and many gems held hidden in reserve. I have, however, left some of the latter for you under my mattress. I suggest you use these to forward the aims of our expedition as you know them, but advise you to remain amongst the Yorkists as the King's people are now convinced that that is where your sympathies lie.
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