Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  'Too grand." he replied. 'Let's just settle for Tataka, the man-eating demoness.'

  Honoured cousin, things are definitely moving here, changing, so I shall not after all commit this letter to the Arab trader I had in mind who has now sailed, hoping to raise Tyre in the Levant in a month or so, but keep it by me and make entries as events unfold. I'll find means to send it on when the situation has clarified. Five days have passed since I put my pen aside, and we are now at the beginning of the month they call July, after Julius Caesar who apparently invented this calendar they use at much the same time as he was building this fortress we are in.

  Ooof! Perhaps I should have waited. Lord Scales is having a wonderful time shooting off his pieces. The gunners load and lay them, he rushes up to each emplacement in turn, touches his saltpetre wick to the charge, watches the touch-hole fizz, then bang! off the thing goes, and he rushes on to the next, back out of the tower, down the steps on to the battlement, along it, which is quite dangerous since he could fall off into the yard, up the stairs to the next tower, bang! and on again. He has six pieces pointing out over the city, three to the north towards the part they call Smithfield and three to the west shooting across the low rise they call Tower Hill and into Billingsgate. For all the height these pieces are set at, and their size, he does not seem able to inflict damage at more than five hundred paces, which is a matter of considerable distress and grief to him as it leaves the bridge just, and only just, beyond his range. And it is over the bridge that Warwick's army is now passing, having been welcomed by the Lord Mayor and aldermen, including, I suppose. Alderman Dawtrey.

  Warwick and the Yorkists are much favoured by the City merchants for several reasons. The King, or most say the Queen in the King's name, has taxed them heavily and has also accepted huge sums from the Hanse merchants, in exchange for privileges they have not had before. The

  Yorkists promise to turn all this round once they have the mad King in their power and meanwhile Warwick's ships, under flags of convenience rather than those of the Calais Pale, have taken Hanse ships on the high seas. So not only have the London merchants welcomed his army, they have even given him fourteen thousand gold coins, an enormous sum, with which to pay and feed his soldiers.

  Naturally as a result, like bees to a hive, men flock to join his army. One of Lord Scales's staff has been stationed on the highest tower and has attempted to count how many have crossed the bridge. He makes it as many as forty thousand, a very considerable army indeed, though how many will remain, once they have been fed and paid and the prospect of long marches and actual fighting conies closer, remains to he seen.

  Meanwhile, the bombardment of the nearer streets continues for a couple of hours each day. After that there has to be a pause while more stone balls are brought up to the pieces, and barrels of powder. At one point we heard a brief altercation between Sergeant Earwicca and Lord Scales, which went some way towards explaining the failure of the cannon to throw their projectiles as far as the bridge.

  'The fucking powder, yer honour, was mixed up in Epping where the charcoal comes from.'

  'I know that, you fool, but where was the powder mixed?'

  'And brought in barrels down the river Lee.'

  'You blithering idiot, they don't mix powder in the village of Finsbury…'

  And so on, the point being that after two hours laying and firing the guns both men were deaf.

  Eventually they came to an understanding of each other. The three ingredients of the powder were mixed in Epping Forest and put into barrels there. Now the constituents weigh differently and the shaking and jolting of the transports, followed by a year or more just standing, had separated them so the charcoal powder, being the lightest, was at the top, then the sulphur and finally the saltpetre.

  Not completely separated, you understand, but enough to compromise the powder's performance.

  Meanwhile, the roofs of the nearest houses are being shattered, and the upper rooms ruined. There have apparently been some deaths and mutilations, and a deputation came to the gates of the Tower to ask Lord Scales to desist. He went out on to the drawbridge to meet them and abused them roundly, saying, 'You scurvy miscreants, I'll blow the whole bloody city apart as long as you harbour a single Yorkist soldier among you. Now get the fuck out of it before I blast you to hell!' and his bowmen let loose a flight of arrows at their backs as they ran for it.

  But one man who had had the sense to bring a buckler along with him, which quickly looked like the back of a porcupine with the arrows sticking out of it, yelled back, 'I'll fucking get you. Lord Scales, when you get out of here. One of your fucking cannon killed my daughter!' and so forth, before, walking backwards, he rejoined his friends at a safe distance, up on Tower Hill, just outside the main gate, where traitors are sometimes executed.

  Our social life has been much improved by these new circumstances. A handful of lords, supporters of the Queen, who were in London, have, with their households, taken refuge with us. I won't bore you with their names, but they're an uncivilised lot. The women go about with low-cut bodices revealing their breasts almost to their nipples, and with gowns cut away in front so you can see their stockinged legs as high as the knee. All, men and women alike, wear copious amounts of jewellery, but a lot of it I have to say is fake or cheap, as garnets for rubies, feldspar for amethyst and topaz, and gold much alloyed with copper. The general effect reminds us more of temple dancers and actors at home than of princes or ministers.

  Anish and I derive much amusement from watching them and conversing with them (we are both now quite at home with the Inglysshe tongue). The women talk of nothing but the expense to which their husbands and fathers have been put to provide their clothes and ornaments, the men of their prowess in the hunt, the strength of their horses, the fleetness of their hounds, and their achievements in jousting – of which more later, if I have time.

  Every morning Scales sends out spies, who return every evening with news of what the Yorkists are up to in the town. They have a great asset in an Italian priest called Coppini, sent by the Pope to bring the opposing sides to a peaceful settlement, but who preaches to the citizens in favour of York. The Pope apparently expects to gain from the Yorkists various rights disputed between the Crown and the Church, and urges the King to accede to the Yorkist demands. Meanwhile, all the Yorkist lords made a great public show in the churchyard of St Paul's of swearing fealty and loyalty to the mad King, insisting that their sole aim is to restore good government to the country.

  It is now the sixth day of July and the Yorkists have been on Inglysshe soil for a fortnight. The King has made no move against them out of Coventry and people say he fears an invasion in the north by York himself and durst not move. So yesterday they began their move against him instead and ten thousand men under Lord Fauconberg marched north. Today Warwick and March left with a further twenty thousand or more, leaving Warwick's father, Lord Salisbury, here with two thousand men to contain us in the Tower and hold the city.

  We were to have a joust in the gardens here today, for the younger men were getting bored and restless. When that happens they fight amongst themselves like puppies while serving-girls, even some of the ladies, go about in constant fear of rape. The lists were set up and the young nobles got into their amazingly complicated heavy armour. This is a crazy sport. They mount horses and charge at each other with heavy spears and try to dislodge each other from the saddle. It looks terrifying, and there's no doubt that inside their steel shells, like crocodiles or giant turtles, those who (all are badly shaken though apparently few are hurt seriously. But it began to rain heavily in the morning, the grass lawns were turned to quagmire, and the whole thing was cancelled.

  Here I must finish as Anish tells me he has heard of a carvel due to sail on the tide to the Levant, and he believes he can bribe a kitchen boy who goes down to the markets every morning to take our letters with him. I've rambled on somewhat but. believe me. I hold at the front of my mind, at all times, the plight
of Prince Jehani and the hope that one-day we may yet come up with him. And both Anish and I do our best to forget that our heads remain on our necks solely at the whim of an irascible old drunk.

  Your obedient and affectionate cousin.

  Prince Harihara

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ' Rain, Mah-Lo, even warm rain like this, still fills my body with

  aches and cramps, and my soul with a blank numbness.’ It was indeed raining, the steady warm rain we know will come every evening in June, following a distant rumbling and tumbling of thunder over the Ghats behind us. Because of it we had moved from the shade of the cardamom tree, but only as far as the shelter of a small free-standing kiosk in the middle of his courtyard. It had a tiled roof and upswung caves that caught the water and made it run to the comers where it fell into channels cut into the granite flags. The rain itself splashed into the little pond, and thudded on the leaves of the ornamental shrubs. Like us, the birds that haunted Ali's garden huddled along the ledges beneath the eaves, eyed it all balefully and waited for it to stop. His grey Burmese, very sleek, prowled up and down the edge of the verandah like a caged black-phase leopard, or panther, clearly longing to make a dash for it to a sheltered patch of soil where it could do its business but desperately loath to get wet.

  Ali went on, 'Look, Mah-Lo, how my finger joints are swollen. My knees appear no different from normal, I grant you, but believe me, they burn inside with terrible pains, and up here in the hollow of my thigh, it is like a sword-thrust. If it was not for the hashish you brought me yesterday I would be dead or mad…"

  And he thrust a ball of the oily resin, as big as the egg of a quail, which he had been rolling between his palms, the warped left one on lop of the sound right, on to the charcoal glowing in the howl of his nargileh before sucking on the mouthpiece as if his life depended on it. As well it might, for all I knew. His sanity anyway. The rich sweet vegetable smoke, cooled by the rosewater through which it had been bubbled, billowed around us. Breathing it in passively, I settled back to enjoy the mild euphoria it provoked, which somehow went well, as far as I was concerned, with the cosy drumming of the rain, the damp warmth, the early darkness of the cloud-filled sky, and presently the steady drone of my companion's old voice.

  That last letter of the Prince's has taken us on three months or so. We must retrace our steps in the sands of time, back to Easter, and the day after Peter gave his sermon, the day I set forth again on my short walk through Middle Ingerlond.

  It started to rain even before I hail got to the wicket gate and by the time I was through it it was pouring. I damn near turned back. I did turn back. And what did I see but my friend now of several months not waving me goodbye from the dry safety of the door-keeper's lodge, but stumbling down the gravel towards me. He took me by the elbow and steered me straight on along the way I was about to go, up on to the main road that passed by the walls of Oxcnford leaving them on the further side of the brown, swirling, pockmarked water. In his left hand he held a large soft leather bag with handles.

  'Forgive me, Ali.' he cried, 'it was boorish of me to send you off like that. Let me come some of the way with you.'

  We splashed on through puddles and over ruts, and presently the rain eased a little, the sun warmed our backs, which steamed gently, and a rainbow appeared over to the right, blessing the bleak prison-like dwellings of scholars and clerics with a brief promise of something better. I have to say I felt happy to be on the road: it was three months since I had set foot outside the Osney priory and, pleasant and welcoming though it had been, I was ready to see new faces and new places. As you know, dear Mah-Lo, my wandering life has, until now, but rarely allowed me to spend more than a month or so in one place, and I still get restless, even now when rest is all I need, rest for these aching bones. Which, let me say, are feeling a lot better now. This is good blow you brought me, much better than the local stuff.

  'Genuine Moon-disc from the Mountains of the Moon,' I said. 'There was a boat came in yesterday from the Gulf ‘

  'The real thing, then.'

  And his eyes went dreamy – possibly he has remembering the years he had spent in his youth amongst the Assassins of the Hindu Kush, at the feet of the fakirs who followed Hassan Ibn Sabbah and took bhang for inspiration. Then he took a deep puff, shook his head, grinned lopsidedly, and went on.

  Presently we came to a parting of the ways, a crossroads in fact. One path led to a bridge and back to the city, another straight on to the north towards, the signs said, Banbury and Coventry, while the one to the right indicated Burford.

  'The Burford road,' said Peter, setting down the leather bag he was carrying, 'for the north west. Burford is an interesting place.'

  I fully expected him to leave me now, having set me on the right road, but again he took my elbow, picked up the bag and went with me, looking up at me with almost childish mischief in his eyes.

  'We are, you know, a preaching order, a mendicant order, and I have dallied too long in the comfort of the cloister. I feel ready to get out now, preach a bit, see a few new faces, pass on some of the fruits of a winter spent in contemplation and hard study. And watching you go, knowing I'd miss you, I thought, if then, why not now? And look…' he loosened the drawstring on the bag, which was black '… I've brought with me what I could lay my hands on in the moment I had of Roger's writings.'

  He pulled up four small books of parchment, bound in leathered boards. He gave the pages a flick. The writing was minuscule.

  'All in code,' he added, 'but I've cracked it.'

  What followed was not what I intended. We spent far too long walking and talking, many weeks, in fact, in pleasant companionship, with a little hardship but not much. Though I tried to urge-on him that my objective was a conventicle of the Brothers of the Free Spirit, which he himself had told me might be near a place called Macclesfield or Manchester. Brother Peter was in no hurry to be anywhere in particular. And, after all, Prince Jehani was Prince Harihara's brother not mine, and for as long as I believed Harihara to be in prison, there was little point in me trying to find Jehani.

  We begged for food (neither of us had with us more than our staff and the clothes we stood up in) and always we got more than we needed. Occasionally Peter gave sermons on street corners, at market crosses, in churchyards or out in the countryside away from the reach of authority or law. His congregations rarely numbered more than a score or so, but equally he was never forced to resort to the expediencies of his mentor, the founder of his order, and preach to the birds. We slept in barns, lazar houses, and occasionally the beds of widows.

  The countryside greened up, the ditches filled with flowers, and I soon forgot that the trees had been leafless. Apple trees blossomed, then pears, the meadows filled with small flowers called buttercups, which sheeted them with yellow, and the woods rang with birdsong, especially that of the two-noted cuckoo that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. In the gifts people brought us, soft sour cheeses and cream figured often, eggs, too, and fresh young roots and cresses. The duck eggs were especially good.

  For the most part Peter preached a message that was not as brave or far-reaching as that he had been inspired with at Easter, but spoke straightforwardly of the blessings of poverty, sharing, owning things communally. He attacked the priesthood and the Normans for stealing from the working people and he condemned superstition, greed, luxurious living, indolence, warfare and so on, and he used, from memory, the Bible in Inglysshe as a text, the translation of John Wycliffe. He always eyed his listeners with a cunning eye, and tempered his message to those who were there: thus if he saw a constable or a reeve he praised the King and the secular law, if there was a poor priest he praised his poverty but if there was a rich one around, a canon or even an abbot, he came quickly to a conclusion and we moved on.

  More interesting were the long talks we had as we covered the ground from one village to the next.

  'Let us agree between ourselves,' he said, quite early on, and even thoug
h we were alone, walking through an oak forest whose boughs were laced with brilliant yellowish fresh green, which he-had pointed out was not leaves but green flowers, he looked over his shoulder and into the holly thickets, to check there was no one in hearing, 'that God is a meaningless concept. We have no need of him…' 'Or her?'

  'Indeed, of her either…' and here he rocked with laughter. 'What a wag you are, Ali. but quite right too. Why shouldn't we call God a woman? Since we're agreed she probably does not exist at all she might just as well be female!'

  'You were saying we have no need of her…'

  'Save perhaps as First Mover. Something must have kicked the whole thing going, but once started then cause and effect takeover, and she could push off to whatever other universes she has an interest in. Granted that, it becomes fascinating, does it not, to speculate on how cause and effect might have put together a chain of Being that resulted in so many diffuse and different species as we see around us? And perhaps to guess what amongst them were the first originals from which the rest came.'

  'Speculation is free and harmless.' I said, but also looked around warily, 'though it may lead to the rack and the stake. So. Speculate."

  'I was rather hoping you would.' 'Why me?'

  'Since you have so reduced all human learning to the two postulates of your sect's founder, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted", you have sloughed off far more of the baggage of learning with which civilisation has loaded us than I have, and you can thus prance about more freely than I. I mean metaphorically,' he added, glancing at my withered hand and scrawny shanks.