Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  I have seen him quite frequently on the way from Macclesfield Forest. Once walking towards us through the rain up an unusually straight track (unusual, that is, for Ingerlond where all but the Roman roads wind like corkscrews), climbing a hill. But he crossed the ditch when he was still a couple of hundred paces from us and strode away into the mist that came down over the moor. On another occasion he sat opposite us in a tavern, went out as if to take a piss, and never came back. Three times he walked just beside and behind me for an hour or two, then was gone.

  Peter insisted that he was a figment of my imagination, that he had heard of such manifestations appearing to people suffering from extreme physical exhaustion and mental distress. Christians even identify this presence with the risen Jesus.

  Considering what we had all been through, my response was to ask him, 'Why then. Peter, are we not all suffering the same hallucinations since we have all suffered in similar ways?'

  At all events, having heard this plea from the youth we still thought of as Eddie, the fakir came up behind me and whispered in my ear, 'Do you still have the kurundams in your bag?'

  'Yes, indeed I do.'

  'Let's have a look at them then.'

  I pulled them out and laid them carefully on a table, beside the candles that lit the tent. The others were still in the doorway, watching the torches of the Welsh, drinking wine and eating pork. Two good reasons why I was already hanging back behind them.

  Have I described these precious stones, these crystals before? Well, I will do so again, but in more detail. They were six inches long, shaped a little like a weaver's shuttle – that is, pointed at both ends and about one and a half inches in diameter at the thickest point in the middle. They were multi-faceted but basically hexagonal, the points at each end being six-sided pyramids. They were perfect, unflawed rubies and even in the dim candlelight on a simple small black oak table, they gathered the light and glowed with it.

  'We shall." said the fakir, 'need the brightest mirrors that can be found. Not polished steel or silver, but glass ones, the backs coated with an amalgam of mercury. Such mirrors are made in Nuremburg and Venice but can be found in the houses of the wealthy almost anywhere in the known world."

  By now those who had remained in the doorway of the tent had turned back in and were listening to us.

  'It would help too, if we had someone with a proper knowledge of the science of optics.'

  And, of course, Peter cleared his throat. 'I am not myself an adept,' he said, 'but I have here,' and he tapped the bag he had been carrying since Easter, 'the investigations the great Roger Bacon made on the subject.'

  Eddie turned to Sir Roger Croft. 'Get us a couple of mirrors, of the sort the chappie wants, there's a good fellow.'

  'I know where I can lay hands on a pair,' said the knight. 'There's a cloth manufacturer in Hereford who trades with the Arnolfini family in Bruges. They sent over a pair as wedding presents when his son got married.'

  "While we are waiting,' the fakir went on, 'we could initiate some simple experiments as precursors." and he picked up one of the kurundams, held it point first towards one of the candles and moved it further and nearer. Presently we all gasped. From the pyramidal point furthest from the candle a narrow beam of bright light, not red as one would expect but green, appeared, and with almost no spreading at all linked the stone to a tiny spot of light six feet away on the canvas wall of the tent. Which began to smoulder.

  'Light amplified by stimulated emission through a ruby.' said Peter, with awe.

  The fakir frowned, as if the Friar had got something slightly wrong.

  It took some doing, but it worked. It had never been done before. There was no possibility of a rehearsal or a trial. At sunrise the next morning it would have to work. And Nature, too, would have to co-operate. A river, a low hill to the east, which was behind us, they were given. What was not given, but could reasonably be expected, was a mist. At that time of year, on nights when there was no wind, there was almost always a mist, a fog even. And if there should not be, or if it was not of the substance the fakir wanted then fires burning green wood and wet dead leaves would be lit on the other side of the rise, to create a false mist. These, too, were prepared but in the event not needed.

  But all this was as nothing compared to the calculations and brain-racking that the fakir and Brother Peter put into the application of the theories of optics Bacon had adumbrated in code, based on but taking far further the discoveries of his Arab predecessor Abu Yusuf Ya' Qu Ibn Ishaq ul-Kindi. Worse still was calculating the exact point at which the rising sun would be at the right height to make the projection they desired.

  All was done in time, but only just. The mirrors, which were small, scarcely eighteen inches across within their carved and gilded frames, but very bright, were placed on scaffolding made from lances and ashpoles found in a nearby farm. The kurundam’s were mounted in front of them and tilted to what the fakir and Peter calculated would be the correct angles.

  'Why three suns?' asked Prince Harihara.

  'To represent the Trinity. The Three in One, the One in Three we are stupid enough to insist represents the godhead.' Brother Peter replied.

  'How.' asked Eddie, 'will the sun shine on two mirrors at once, tilling both with its light at the same time?'

  This gave one or two who were there a moment's doubt – we could see it in their faces.

  'By the same means," said the fakir, with weary patience inflecting his words, 'that it casts a shadow from your body at the same time as it casts one from mine.'

  'Ah. Yes. Of course. I see.'

  But I doubted that he did.

  It worked, all right. It worked. There was a mist. It hung in the tree-tops, grey like a wolf's pelt in the pre-dawn light. It became rosy then golden and… began to shift. But then the sun. a red disc beneath a bank of cloud, rose above it and the illusion was there, there for perhaps two minutes, but long enough.

  The sun's rays hit the mirrors, were reflected back into the kurundams, which projected them as beams that spread enough to form red circles of light on the mist, just below the sun itself, giving an illusion of three suns not one. The army cheered, they'd been told to. Two lords, who had been about to lead their men across to the other side, reined in their horses and rather bashfully waited Eddie's command to charge. It came as the two lower suns faded. Pausing only to announce that from henceforth the sun in its glory, this sun of York, would be his personal badge and that he wanted a shield with the three suns on it prepared immediately, Eddie touched spurs to Genet's flanks and trotted across the bridge to lead his men to victory.

  The fakir looked around, touched fingertips to the bottom hem of his turban in the Allaha Ismahrlahdik. 'Light amplified by stimulated emission through radiation,' he said, over his shoulder, as he walked off down the reverse slope, away from the battle. We did not see him again.

  'And that was the battle at which Owen Tudor and his son were taken?' I asked. 'That's right.'

  'And Eddie had their heads chopped off that evening.' 'That, too, is right.'

  'I should not think that endeared him to Uma.' 'Well. We shall see what she has to say about that.'

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The day's monsoon was over when we gathered again to hear Ali's account of the last great battle, the one that finished the war. Uma and her two children arrived a few minutes later than she had promised, which irritated Ali a little. However, generally speaking he was now in a much belter mood although the atmosphere was still humid, almost like a Turkish bath. The sun shone, the stones and flower-beds exhaled steam, the birds sang and fitted through it, the flowers opened, and the garden was filled with the most wonderful overpowering scents. The Burmese cat slept, stretched out in the shade.

  ‘I am sorry,' said Uma, as she handed her twins to their ayla, who took them into the shady back rooms to play, 'but they insisted I should buy them sherbets on the way.'

  She took a seat next to Ali, and occasionally took hi
s clawed left hand on to her knee and stroked it, but added little to his tale. Like me, she was there to listen.

  Already a fortnight before the battle of the Three Suns in Splendour, the Queen's army had begun its march from the north. However, these huge armies of thirty, fifty thousand men, particularly if they have cannon with them, can only move a few miles in a day. Fifteen at the most, often as little as ten. It takes a lot of organising, too, to make sure that all are fed on the way and the usual practice, wherever the roads will allow it, is to split up into three columns moving by different routes, but always in touch with each other and ready to pull in together if their scurriers discover a large force of the enemy.

  Feeding was not much of a problem once they were across the river Trent, which is taken as the natural border between north and south Ingerlond, and this war was in some ways becoming a Conflict between north and south. At all events, once across it the Queen unleashed the hounds of war upon the land, famine, sword and fire, urging her men to loot and destroy, bum, pillage and rape their way forward: these were the lands whose men had filled the ranks of York at the battle of Northampton. But what she saved in money she lost in time, for her progress became even slower as her men became more preoccupied with destruction and theft: many it was said attempted to carry quite large items such as chests, plate and tools with them.

  And. of course, it was the coldest time of year, the days only just beginning to lengthen, and each day time was needed to find food, light fires, cook, find warm lodging for the night, rape the women and slaughter the children.

  Nevertheless, she was at St Alban's by the seventeenth of February. Warwick had already inarched out with his army from London to confront her and a battle followed, at first fought mainly in the streets. However, as the Queen's army took the upper hand, Warwick pulled back to defensive positions across the London roads with cannon and anti-cavalry devices in front of him, and a group of five hundred Burgundians armed with flaming arrows and handguns. But, of course, it began to snow heavily and yet again the cannon and guns failed those who had put their trust in them. More effective was a unit of crossbowmen, some of whose weapons were very large, capable of firing a bolt into a compact group of men that would transfix three or four on it before losing momentum.

  Worse than the snow for Warwick was treachery. Ah! Treachery. One of the best captains of the tune was a Sir Henry Lovelace. He had been a Yorkist, was captured at Wakefield, but escaped execution by swearing henceforth to fight for the Queen. The night before St Alban's he came into the Yorkist camp and swore to return to the Yorkist fold. However, he held back his troops until he saw how the Queen's army was gaining the upper hand when, instead of coming to Warwick's rescue, he reverted to the Queen and, just as Lord Grey had at Northampton, left a gap in Warwick's lines, through which the Queen's men streamed. Warwick now realised that the battle was lost, sounded the retreat, and managed to get clear with four thousand men.

  King Henry, whom Warwick had brought with him to add credence to his cause, was found beneath an oak tree, mumbling madly. However, he seemed pleased to be reunited with his queen and putative son.

  Next day, the heads of the nobler prisoners were lopped off in the marketplace, including those of the two lords whose duty had been to protect the King. The Queen asked her son, 'Fair son, what death shall these two knights die?'

  'Let them have their heads taken off,' the eight-year-old replied, and stayed to see it done.

  It's very likely they lost their lives for carrying out their commission too well. The Queen would have been happy to see the King, her husband, chopped up in the battle, thereby leaving the way clear for her monstrous son to rule with her as regent.

  The way to London was now clear for her, but uncharacteristically she hesitated, or her captains did on her behalf. The city, though vulnerable, was for the most part Yorkist, having been taxed and bullied by the Queen for far too long. It could defend itself against a siege, could cause endless trouble if it let the army in but then refused to accommodate it properly. Then news came that Warwick had met up with Eddie at Abingdon and that was enough. A convoy of money and provisions the Mayor had put together for the relief of the Queen's army at St Alban's was seized by the citizens and disappeared. Negotiations continued for a few days but, beset with massive desertions from her starving northerners, the Queen withdrew first to Dunstable, a further ten miles or so north-west, and finally to the north.

  Having won a battle at Mortimer's Cross, and lost another at St Alban's, the Yorkists, led by Eddie and Warwick, entered London in triumph on the twenty-seventh of February.

  Meanwhile, our purpose was to get home as quickly as possible, and that meant finding a boat that would take us as far as the Mediterranean and into Arab lands and civilisation. This we had decided on in preference to making the trip back across France and north Italy to Venice – Prince Harihara was in something of a depression about his brother and had now developed a hate for this cold wet land we were in – well, we all had: the joys of its spring and summer now seemed a long way off, and somehow unlikely to return. He longed for his own country and was ready to risk drowning on the seas for the sake of getting home a few weeks earlier.

  I recall how, one night, just before we reached Oxenford where we left Brother Peter, the Prince in his melancholy speculated about the world we live on, with these distances in mind. We were in yet another hostelry at the time.

  'You know,' he said, 'no one knows just how far away India and Vijayanagara are.'

  Anish waited, not wishing to show by his expression what he-thought of his master's sanity. I was less constrained. I was going through a bad time with the onset of these pains.

  'Of course they bloody do,' I said, using an Inglysshe expression I had picked up. 'Give or take five hundred miles or so.'

  But Brother Peter looked up from the soup he was eating, eyes shining with interest.

  'We all know,' the Prince went on, 'that the world is round. A sphere, a globe. Right?'

  We all nodded. Flat-earthers went out two thousand years ago – old Aristotle and his friends had seen to that.

  'We don't know what the circumference of this globe is at its greatest girth, but we do know that the distance will be less according to how close to or distant we are from the part where the girth is greater.'

  Anish was looking puzzled now. Brother Peter, who had often speculated along these lines, as indeed had Roger Bacon in his coded writings, now came to his rescue by picking up an apple. 'Look,' he said, 'if we are here,' and he poked it with his finger then picked up a knife and with the point made a tiny cross, 'and Vijayanagara is there,' he marked it on the other side, 'then it does not much matter if one goes east to get to Vijayanagara or west…'

  'But,' said Prince Harihara, 'if it were here…' and he took the apple out of Peter's hand and marked it with a third cross just to the left of the first one, 'then everyone's been going the wrong way round. For all we know we're just, say, a week's sailing from home, if we go west rather than east.'

  At this point another customer intruded, a small man with a beard whose tarred gaberdine suggested a seafaring man. He leant over us, took the apple. 'We're not fucking daft, you know. Not the way you are.'

  'Who are we?' asked Peter, laying a restraining hand on Prince Harihara's sleeve. The Prince was clearly annoyed to lose his apple and the centre of attention.

  Fucking sailors, of course. The fucking wind, four days out of five, blows from the fucking west, don't it? Even if you left on an east wind you'd be back home in a week on a fucking westerly. Like it or not…' and he took a noisy crunch out of the apple, which was sweet and crisp though it still smelt of the hay it had been laid up in.

  'But,' said Brother Peter, in his gentle way, 'I have heard how if one goes further south, to the south of Spain, or better still the north-west coast of Africa, one finds almost constant winds blowing from the north-east. Los Alisios, they call them.'

  'All right for fucking dago
s and darkies.' said jolly Jack Tar, 'not much bloody use for us."

  The next day we said farewell to Peter at the gate of his friary. First, he gave us the pages of Bacon's writing to do with gunpowder and the casting of cannon. 'His secrets are in better hands with you. If this lot," he meant the Inglysshe. 'get hold of them, then the Prime Mover alone knows what will happen to us all…'

  'What was the main gist of these disclosures?' I asked, as quietly and politely as I could.

  'Ah, dear Mah-Lo, I do sometimes wonder about your occasional curiosity, your willingness to be bored by me day after day. Is it really just generosity to an old man, or do you have another agendum?' Ali sipped his lemonade. 'Well, I'll tell you. There were three important things only. First, the best proportions in which to mix the ingredients. They are as follows. Split it into one hundred parts. Seventy-five should be saltpetre, fifteen charcoal, and ten sulphur. Not the sixty-six, twenty-three, eleven split now in general use. The second is more clever. To avoid the separation of the three constituents by shaking and settling, the art is to mix them thoroughly, then wet them to a paste, then let the paste dry out. The three parts will remain in granules, each granule containing all the ingredients in exactly the same distribution as they were. Three, a method for extracting saltpetre from rotting vegetation. There were other hints of smaller importance, which I won't bother you with, but I can say that in recent skirmishes with Bahmani troops, the artillery in the pay of the Vijayanagarans has outshot theirs by a hundred paces or more. No, that is all I am saying. You must let us bring our story to a conclusion. Then you may ask questions.'