Pillars of Light (8 page)

JANUARY 1188

O
n the day after Twelfth Night I found myself on trial at the Bath Assizes.

The witnesses shuffled past, a good-sized crowd, so keen to see me hang that many had travelled all the way from Glastonbury: burghers and millers, butchers and pardoners; a merchant in Flemish red and his wife, with a pearl necklace making deep, round indentations in her fat white neck; the blind man, with another guiding him—the wound on his forehead had almost healed, though the bruise still showed yellow.

The business of the court was tedious and the judge’s clerk had a droning voice that stopped me from paying attention to his words. At last it was my turn to speak.

“I am an innocent man!” I lied. “And I claim my right to trial by …” trying to recall the exact words, “ordeal. I cite my right to trial by ordeal under the 1166 Assize of Clarendon.”

At once there was furious muttering. Geoffrey de Glanvill thumped the table, and the ring that broke my nose winked in the light. “Outrageous!” he roared. “How dare you try to escape your just punishment by such lawyer’s tricks! You are a thief, a liar and a
heathen, and I shall see you swing!”

The assize judge, having conferred with his clerk and the sheriff, leaned across to whisper into de Glanvill’s ear and there followed a furious exchange of whispers. Then de Glanvill sat back.

“John Savage,” the judge announced, “you are entitled to trial by ordeal in answer to the charges laid against you.” He looked at de Glanville. “The baron has requested that the test be the ordeal of oil.”

Oil? My stomach turned over. Boiling oil burns down to the bone. I had heard of murderers made to stand on burning coals until their feet were blackened ruins. The Moor had once told of an ordeal practised by the desert peoples: “A ladle is heated in the fire and then laid upon the tongue of the accused. If the man is lying, the tongue will shrivel and he will not lie again. The Bedu call this rite ‘the true light of God.’ ”

“Christ on an ass!” I had blasphemed. “That’s barbaric.”

The judge was speaking again. “… However, the assize decrees that the ordeal for the crimes of which you are accused should be the ordeal by water.”

Water was surely better than oil, wasn’t it? What was the Moor’s plan? Terror flooded in again. My knees buckled and I had to be caught by the guard. I hardly registered the moment when the officials returned with the pitcher of boiling water, but suddenly there was a lot of steam in the air, and I thought,
It’s January and very cold—maybe with every moment that passes the water will cool and be less likely to do me damage
. Then another man pushed through the crowd and set a brazier full of glowing red coals beneath the pitcher.

The mechanics of the trial were explained to the audience. The correct temperature of the water would be tested by lowering an egg into the liquid: if the egg cooked, then the defendant’s right arm would be plunged into the vessel and held there for the duration of the Lord’s Prayer. If his arm scalded—
my arm!
a voice in
my head cried—and the flesh sloughed away from the bone—
my flesh, my bone!
—then he was clearly guilty in the eyes of the Almighty and he would have his right foot severed and be hanged forthwith. But if at the end of the prayer the prisoner revealed to the world an unscathed limb, then not only would all charges against him be dropped, but any sin he might have committed in his time on this earth would be forgiven.

How I wished I had stayed on the Mount and taken my beatings like a dutiful oblate.

The egg was dropped into the pitcher. Time passed. It felt like years. I began to think about how much I liked my right arm. It had fed me and defended me. Given me enough pleasure to damn me for lustfulness. It had swept the refectory and drawn a hundred likenesses and wiped my arse. It had been very useful, my arm. I was quite attached to it.

A bead of sweat ran down my back, the Devil’s finger tracing down my spine.

The egg came out. Its shell was cracked. The white was boiled hard.

“John Savage,” the judge intoned, “you are accused of running a criminal gang, of larceny and deception. Do you maintain your claim of innocence of these charges and do you stand for …” He looked at the parchment the clerk handed him, read out the names of the troupe one by one: William of Worcester, Michael and Saul Dyer, Edward Little, Enoch Pilchard, Mary White. My befuddled brain had trouble making sense of the proper names of the members of our troupe. My mouth was so dry I could not find the words. I nodded.

“And will you now prove your word with your deeds, in the view of God Almighty and all people here gathered, and undertake this ordeal?”

My arm was going to be boiled off. And where was the Moor?
I remembered the way he had turned his half-moon eyes upon me, told me to trust him. Did I trust him? He was possibly a murderer, most certainly a trickster. But those eyes, and the way he had touched my face so tenderly through the bars of my cell …

I swallowed, aware of Geoffrey de Glanvill’s burning, hate-filled gaze.

“I will.”

One of the guards grinned in my face, his teeth yellow as a rat’s, then took rough hold of my right arm and rolled the sleeve up to the shoulder. I’d never felt so naked. As I approached the table, the heat from the brazier crisped the hairs in my nose. The air hung still as the spectators anticipated pain and damnation.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven …” the officers dutifully chanted, so slowly that each syllable crawled into the next.

Trying to blank out the panicking creature that chattered in my head, imploring me to push through the crowd and run like a rabbit, I closed my eyes.
May I see the Moor in Hell if he fails me …
And I plunged my right arm into the pitcher of boiling water.

Shock engulfed me. I could not tell what I felt. The sensation was so brutal it transcended the definition of “hot.”

“Thy kingdom come …”

A foul odour bloomed in the courtroom—pungent, sulphurous—and a man in the audience made a joke about it smelling like his wife’s cooking. “I ain’t taking a bowl of soup at your house again!” his neighbour quipped. People laughed.

I bit down on a scream. In my mind I saw my limb withdrawn into the light, revealing a vile mutilation, the flesh scarlet and melting …

“And forgive us our trespasses …”

My poor arm. What would I do without it? Then I remembered that it wouldn’t matter. If I failed the ordeal I’d not be needing the arm anyway, because I’d be getting hanged forthwith.

“For ever and ever …

“Amen.”

“Remove your arm from the pitcher.”

The voice of the judge broke into my cruel reverie, but I was so lost in my horrid imaginings that I simply stared at him.

“The ordeal is over!”

Slowly, I took my arm out of the pitcher. Little curls of vapour twisted up from the surface, spiralled lazily to the ceiling. The crowd gasped. The arm was pink—not a savage, raw red, but the pink of skin gently warmed in a salving liquid, the pink I saw the one and only time I ever willingly took a bath at St. Michael’s Priory—glowing, healthy, unmarked pink. In fact, I thought, my arm looked better than when it went in. Cleaner, certainly.

Geoffrey de Glanvill stood for a better look. “God’s eyes, this is some trickery!” he growled.

The judge reprimanded him for his blasphemy, then turned his attention to me. “John Savage, you have undergone the trial by ordeal of water and God has judged you and yours innocent of all charges. Your associates will be released. You are free to go.”

I was carried from the courthouse on the shoulders of the crowd, who, in their fickle, superstitious manner, had decided that I was to be treated like a living relic, the beneficiary of God’s miraculous intervention. I was touched for good luck, bought ale—horrible, thick, porridgey stuff they had to skim the barley out of—and offered tarts, both edible and female.

It was late evening before the Moor found me in an alley, alone at last, with a bellyful of ale.

“What was in the pitcher?” I asked him as he helped me to the dormitory.

“Water.”

“Water and what?”

He tapped his nose. “A substance that makes it smoke. A little trick I picked up from a sorcerer in Marrakech.” It was all he would say.

“Are you a sorcerer?” I asked.

He tipped his head back and laughed. “I’ve been called such in my time, among much else. But believe me, John, I would have let no harm come to you. You must always remember that, and trust me.”

Through ale-glazed eyes I scrutinized him woozily. “How can I trust a man who won’t tell me his name?”

His face became very still. Then he leaned towards me and whispered something close to my ear. I felt his breath, hot against my neck. But I was too drunk to catch the words, and seconds later I passed out.

O
n a bit of waste ground on the edge of Bath, we staged our rehearsals under a leaden sky.

“Scream, Mary. Really scream! Clutch your bodice like a woman trying to preserve her last shred of decency.”

Plaguey Mary waved an arm at her rapist—Red Will, hunched with embarrassment, the blacking on his face smeared by sweat. “He’s hopeless. You should make
him
the ravisher.” She winked at the Moor.

“Do not ask me to play a Saracen as some brutish villain.” The Moor turned away.

I took the curved wooden sword from Will’s hand. “Look, like this.” I brandished the weapon, snarling horribly. “You’ve just slashed your way into Jerusalem and now it’s time to take your prize. You’re going to sow your seed in every infidel woman you can lay hands on. It’s your right as a conqueror.”

The Moor looked at me, slowly shook his head, then walked away.

Will nodded uncertainly. He’d only ever lain with two women, he’d admitted to me late one night on the road. One of them was his
friend’s sister when they were both off their faces on mead, and he couldn’t even remember if he’d managed to put it inside her. And the other was Mary, when he’d plucked up the courage to offer her his pennies; and then she’d laughed at his poor, nervous offering and deemed it too small to be a “William,” maybe just a “Bill.”

He took the scimitar back and waved it overhead, pulling a face.

“Grimace, don’t simper! And Mary, don’t flash your dugs. Remember, you’re a God-fearing woman who’s just seen her sons cut down by a pack of Saracens. Look terrified and pray for deliverance.”

Mary snorted and tossed her unruly shag of hair. For the past decade she had been living off her wits. She didn’t care what any man thought of her; she knew perfectly well what she thought of them.

“Much good praying ever did anyone. She’d be better off belting him with her piss-pot.”

“For shame, Mary!” Will growled. He might have been a penniless minstrel and a thief, but still he prayed three times a day and meant every word of it.

“It’s very simple,” I told them. “If you play your parts well we all make money, and if you screw it up we’ll be back in the gaol waiting for the rope.”

This seemed to focus them for a while.

Savaric and Bishop Reginald came to watch us rehearse. The bishop stood there with the corners of his mouth turned down when the play-acting got too coarse, but Savaric cheered us on.

“You can’t underplay these things, Reggie. The populace doesn’t understand subtlety. The mummers aren’t here to appeal to their better natures—that’s down to you and me—it’s their blood they’ve got to rouse.” He leapt into the square we had marked out to represent the dais and he acted out both parts—Saracen marauder and abused woman—with unseemly gusto.

“You’re remaking the world for them,” he explained, panting. “Here they are, tucked away in their safe little villages. For them, Jerusalem may as well be on the moon, or under the sea. It’s your job to make Jerusalem come to them. You’ve got to make them care enough that it’s lost that they’ll give up all they hold dear to go and win it back. When you,” he said to Red Will, shifting from foot to foot, “ravish Mary here, you have to make a man believe the Saracen could be beating down his door at any minute to carry off his wife!”