Pillars of Light (18 page)

When the sun was high the call to prayer was heard shimmering through the air, and they all dismounted, cleansed themselves as best they could, knelt in the direction of Mecca and prayed. Then they ate their dates and bread and drank water from the skins at their saddles. The sun beat down, and still more Franj arrived by land and sea, and still the sultan sat his horse, watching and saying hardly a word.

At last the scouts and spies returned and they rode to where his war tent had been erected on Tell Keisan. There they made their reports, and Salah ad-Din nodded, and the qadi of the army, Baha ad-Din, watched, and the sultan’s scribe, Imad al-Din, took notes.

At last the sultan passed the word that they would outflank the Christians, extending their lines in a large crescent by which to venerate Allah himself, the horns of the moon to encompass the whole Franj army from north to south.

“And so,” he said softly, “the besiegers become the besieged.”

OCTOBER 1189

T
he coronation of Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, eldest surviving son of Henry and Eleanor, took place in the abbey church of St. Peter in Westminster on the nones of September, and even though many rich and powerful men of the kingdom were excluded from the ceremony, I was there, attending upon Savaric de Bohun, crammed in with all the nobles of the court—lords and earls, bishops and barons. Not a woman or a Jew in sight, both banned as bringers of bad luck.

I stood in the crowd, thinking rich men smelled no better than poor men, as we waited for the heir and his lords. A rich purple cloth had been laid all the way from the church entrance, up the aisle to the high altar.

“Tyrian purple, the colour of emperors!” Savaric fairly swooned at the sight of so much of it. “So costly only kings can afford it, for they say it never fades. Such a purple is obtained from a dye called argaman. Do you know how it is made?”

I sighed. “I am sure you are going to tell me.”

“It is made by the crushing of a million tiny snails, and those
snails are to be found only in the seas off Tyre. Twelve thousand of them would be sufficient to dye your cuff, and for the best effect the creatures must be harvested only after the rising of the Dog Star. I read this in Pliny, so it must be true. When I return from the Holy Land, I shall bring back a quantity for my use, mine and Reggie’s—our robes will be the most resplendent in all the kingdom.”

I watched Bishop Reginald take his place alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Forde, his arms full of the robes of state. The two churchmen exchanged a cursory nod; you could see they didn’t like each other. I was surprised at the archbishop’s advanced age. I’d heard while he and Gerald of Wales went on their preaching tour he’d forced his retinue to march hard up and down hill to get them into training for the coming war in the Holy Land, so intent was he on triumphing over the heathen horde. White-haired and scrawny, he didn’t look to me like a man who could bear such rough treatment.

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 real.” 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.”