Pillars of Light (12 page)

Savaric turned to him. “They do say that, don’t they?” A pause. “I will do my utmost to raise funds for his holy war. And in doing so, perhaps I can save my soul.”

He hauled himself to his feet, and at once the Moor stood to steady him. Savaric waved him away. “Leave me be. Where is my cousin? I must talk to him right away!” And he lurched off into the gloom.

“I will see you to the path, at least,” the Moor said. “We do not want you falling into the marsh.”

I sat there freezing on the chilly shingle, wishing I still had the fur the monks had shaved off. Such a bright moon: it was like an eye, the eye of God, beaming down on me. What did it see? An unworthy soul, a half-wild thing pretending to be a civilized man? A man who loved another? Unnatural, absurd.

Shingle crunching underfoot.

I turned so fast I cricked my neck. The Moor was looking down at me, his gaze more penetrating even than the silver eye above. Then he folded his long legs and we sat there in the darkness. I could feel a tension between us that had never been there before and I was suddenly tongue-tied. All the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and my mouth burned as it remembered another time we were alone together in the night, when he had pushed me out of Saint Edith’s chapel all those months ago. I wished I could take him by the arm now, brotherly, casual. Say, “So, that kiss you gave me in Wilton. Tell me, what was that about, eh?” But of course I couldn’t. And so I sat rooted like some big, dumb plant, its leaves trembling at every touch of breeze, waiting desperately for the sun to shine on it again.

At last he turned to me. For one terrifying, delicious moment I
thought maybe he would kiss me again. But all he said was, “I think we shall soon be heading for foreign climes.”

A minute later he stretched and rose, pulled me to my feet, and together we walked in silence back to the abbey.

The next day, fervour was in the air. There was to be a new king: the first prince in Europe to take the cross. There was money to be made, and Richard’s favour to be won.

Bishop Reginald held forth in ringing tones, reminding the crowd of the terrors that await the sinful soul when it descends into Hell, of the demons with their pincers and tridents, of the flames that burn to the bone but never devour, of the howls of the tormented and their never-ending trials. Beside me, Savaric groaned and hung his head.

“You are a blessed generation!” Reginald cried. “You are blessed to be alive in this year of jubilee. This chance will not come again. To you who are merchants, men quick to recognize and seize a bargain, let me point out the advantages of this offer. Do not miss out on this great opportunity to buy your way into the Kingdom of Heaven. Take up the cross and vow to fight for the Holy Land and you will be rewarded with indulgence for all your sins. I, Reginald of Bath, second in the intercessionary line after only the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, will take your confession and ensure that God hears your vow. Sign for the cross today and all will be forgiven. The cost is so small, the reward so great—the firm promise of entrance to Paradise forever and ever, amen.”

There was a sob behind us, and Savaric pushed past us to fall on his knees before his cousin.

“Take me for the cross!” he cried. “God knows, my sins are great. I was close to the king, foremost among his nobles, but I transgressed. Oh, how I transgressed! I drank and swore and I
gambled. Oh, how I gambled! As God is my witness, I loved the dice better than my Bible. I carried my favourite pair with me at all times …”

He held up his great gold chain and the crowd fell hushed and attentive. Then he clicked open the great ruby bauble on the end of it and from this tipped a pair of dice into his palm and held them up to the crowd.

“I have won and lost fortunes with these two mites of wood.” He paused, considering. “Mainly lost.” He bowed his head, turned the dice over in his palm, then cast them far out into the crowd. “I abjure my wicked ways!” he cried, “and I hereby take the cross.”

I stared at the Moor, who seemed transfixed. “We never rehearsed this,” I said uncertainly.

Bishop Reginald looked confused, but he gave his cousin the Bible to kiss, signed him with the cross and handed him his token.

Savaric held it aloft. “For King Henry, God rest his soul! And for Richard, who has vowed to retake Jerusalem, I pledge my allegiance to the cause, and that of all my associates, who will accompany me!” And then he turned to survey us, his “associates.”

“Is he still drunk?” I asked.

There was no answer. If the Moor was ever shocked by anything, he masked it so well you would never know. But now a vein pulsed on his forehead and his face looked full of blood.

“Come along, my friends!” Savaric exhorted us. “Fall on your knees beside me.”

Astonishingly, it was Rosamund, or should I say Ezra, who was the first to answer his call. Having just played the role of a Saracen, she came galloping past us all onto the dais in blackface to lay her wooden sword at his feet and cry out, in as manly a voice as she could manage, “I take the cross!”

The crowd cheered—there was something about her youth and passion that moved them.

The twins, Hammer and Saw, followed with a shrug. “What else is there to do once the tour is over?” Saw asked. Like Savaric, they waved their wooden crosses, the crosses they had so roughly carved sitting on the back of the wagon.

“Ah, fook,” said Quickfinger, looking forlorn. Then he pushed past me and knelt at Bishop Reginald’s feet.

Will gazed at Mary with a plea in his eyes. She looked away. I saw him set his jaw, and then he too mounted the dais, which left only the Moor and me.

“They can’t hold you to it, can they, the vow?” I asked. I thought of all the criminals we sprang from gaol in Salisbury. I was willing to bet none of them was planning on taking ship for
Terra Sancta
.

“It’s your immortal soul,” the Moor said. He put his hands on my shoulders and regarded me steadily. “This is where our ways must part, John.”

I stared at him. “What? No! I don’t want to go to war. I want to go … wherever you are going.”

“You cannot come where I am going, John. You’re not ready for that. Stay with the troupe—they need you, especially Ezra. She’s not as tough as she thinks she is. Look after her.” He touched me lightly on the cheek. “We will meet again.”

Then he turned and walked away with all the dignity of a prince, leaving me exposed and alone, my knees trembling like the fool I was.

What could I do? I should have run after him in full sight of the crowd, should have caught him by the arm and demanded to accompany him, told him I loved him and cared about nothing else. But instead I stood silent, in desperate confusion, wailing inwardly, once more an abandoned child. The scent of roses bloomed all around me but there were no doors to Heaven opening before me.

As if in a trance, I found myself walking slowly up the steps and dropping to my knees before the bishop.

That night, on our return to the dormitory, thick in the head with the gallons of ale I had drunk to drown my desperation, I found tucked carefully beneath my drawing satchel a pouch of soft leather. When I picked it up, it lay heavy in my hand. Inside were about twenty silver coins, a small fortune. Surely this was all the money the Moor had amassed for his part in our unholy charades these long months.

There was something else in the bottom of the pouch. Wrapped in a square of green silk was a heavy length of crystal hanging from a leather thong. And inside the crystal was the Nail of Treves.

JULY 1189

Z
ohra yawned and stretched out the crick in her back. She’d been up and working since before first prayer. She had prepared the day’s dough, taken it to the oven, made a sweet barley porridge, swept the downstairs rooms and watered the plants—all those small tasks that men could not be expected to do themselves. Then she had changed her mother’s linen, turned her, washed her, brushed her hair and smoothed rosewater over her face. Her father’s sisters had often come to offer their help with her mother, but Baltasar, too proud to admit to the extent of the disability caused by his old war wounds, had turned his face away from them.

Zohra propped her mother’s head up on the yellow silk cushion to help the water go down her throat. For the past week Nima Najib had stopped swallowing of her own accord, but just lay there, breathing through her mouth, her brow furrowed as if deep in dream she was concentrating on some insoluble problem.

She stroked her mother’s cheek, so dry and diminished, and suddenly felt a wave of anger. How could she deteriorate so quickly
and leave Zohra to do everything? Nima was not an old woman, was maybe in the middle of her fourth decade, but ever since catching that fever she’d been getting weaker all the time. Zohra sensed this new phase was no longer the normal exhaustion of a suffering patient. But she was too young to die. Wasn’t she? Zohra took one of the lax hands in her own and shook it in a sort of rage. But her mother did not stir.

The call to
dhuhr
, the noon prayer, rang out across the city. Zohra looked through the window-grille to the city beyond. Under a turquoise sky a clutter of ochre roof terraces, seemingly piled one on another, stretched all the way to the sparkling sea, punctured here and there by slender turrets, cupolas and the great minaret of the Friday Mosque, and finally by the Tower of Flies at the end of the breakwater.

“Is she still asleep?”

Her young brother Kamal was a troublesome boy, much given to outbursts of temper—the last thing you needed in a household in which one parent was sick and the other crippled.

“Yes, she’s still asleep.”

“Is she going to get up today?” His light eyes, so like her own—more gold than brown—blazed at her.

“Maybe later,
insh’allah
.”

Kamal stared at his mother. “She’s drooling.”

“I just gave her some water.”

He laid his head down beside Nima’s, then jerked back. “Her breath stinks! You should give her mint leaves to chew.”

Nima could no longer chew but there was no point in saying so.

“I want her to be well again!”

“You just want her to fuss over you.” She ruffled his hair. Kamal was their mother’s favourite, despite his petulance. “Have you seen Aisa?” she asked.

At once his twin bristled. “Why?”

“I have to go to the bazaar. I thought he might sit with Ummi.”

“He’s up on the roof with Baba and his pigeons.” He wrinkled his nose. “Filthy, smelly things.”

The year before, Kamal had stolen a pair of Baltasar’s precious birds and sold them to a butcher in the souq. Only Zohra knew the truth about the missing pigeons: when she’d come to do the washing, she’d found guano all over Kamal’s sleeve. He’d sworn it was from the gulls—an unlucky hit—but Zohra knew pigeon shit when she saw it.

“I’ll watch over Mother. Don’t you trust me?”

She smiled, but he was not far wrong.

He stood there, looking down at Nima, his face dark. “If she does not get well soon, I will hate God and all mankind.”