Pillars of Light (24 page)

APRIL 1190

I
t takes an eternity to muster, provision and organize an army. We did not sail out of Dartmouth harbour until Easter day 1190, blessed by Archbishop Baldwin the Pious himself: ten warships bound for the Holy Land under the flag of King Richard.

When we rounded the cape known as Finisterre, the End of the World, never did a name seem more apt or wished for. I’d been heaving my guts up day and night since we set sail. The other members of the troupe found my condition highly amusing: of all of us—Savaric, Quickfinger, Ezra, Hammer, Saw, Little Ned, Red Will—it seemed I was the only one who’d failed to find his sea legs. Most of them taunted me cruelly, for they were bored, the whole army being banned by edict from gambling, dice games, fighting and swearing. You would think a man born a maid might have been a bit more tender, but Ezra (once Rosamund) was the worst of all. She chuckled at the sight of me all asweat and trembling, planted her feet wide on the deck, grinning as my face got greener. “Ah, poor John, truly you are a creature of the land,” she opined, bobbing and swaying in front of
me. “Whatever possessed you to board a ship that’ll be weeks and months at sea?”

It was a fair question, and one I kept asking myself.

We all wore Savaric’s livery. The symbol on it was a hawk in a tree. Little Ned said the device was Savaric’s own invention, but if that was so, I was sure he was not the only noble to fabricate such a vanity. There were all sorts proclaiming themselves to be gentry after Richard dispossessed most of the old regime of his father’s barons and lords of their goods and land. Some, you could tell in a second, were lords of no more than a dozen sheep and a tumbledown cot. As Saw said, “If they speak English you can bet your arse they’re no more noble than me.”

Those with the power were all French. French was the language you’d hear spoken on board the ship. We’d all had to learn a bit just to get by. We were on our way to Lisbon to, as they say,
ronday voo
with the rest of the Christian forces and together sail between the Pillars of Hercules and into the Middle Sea before the weather got worse. Though it was hard to imagine what “worse” might entail.

I didn’t have to wait very long to find out. A few days later a big wave hit the ship broadside and knocked me flat. I managed to push myself to my knees, hands clasped to my chest as if to force down the furious turmoil within me, turmoil that matched the roiling sea beyond.

“Yes, let us pray, my good man,” someone said in English, and when I turned my head there was Baldwin of Ford, wearing no mitre or vestments, just a snowy robe. God alone knew how he kept it so clean on that filthy vessel. His watery blue eyes shone with fervour in a face that was far too pink and hale for such an old man at the mercy of the ocean, and for an instant I felt a surge of hatred for him.

“Let us pray to the risen Christ, whose blessed Ascension we mark this very day.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t, for nausea had me in its grasp. The archbishop spoke to me in Latin and then in French, but still he got no word from me. I could hear his disapproval in the way the prayers sped up, and he snapped off the words as if he would rather not waste them on such an ingrate. “At least say amen,” he spat at last, and the pressure of the air between us was too much for me to bear on top of all else, and “Amen” I croaked out.

Unfortunately, it was not all that came out. A flood of foul bile went everywhere. Not just over the deck and my knees, but also splattering over that snowy robe and even into that snowy, snowy beard.

The archbishop laid hands on me and, shaking me, violently intoned, “Holy Lord, snatch from ruination and from the clutches of the noonday devil this human being made in Your image and likeness. Let Your mighty hand cast him out of Your servant …” He glared at me, the watery blue of his eyes sparking cold fire. “What is your name, man?”

More spew threatened. I choked it down. “John Savage.”

As if the name confirmed all his suspicions, he shook me harder. “Let Your mighty hand cast him out of Your servant, John Savage.”

He shook me so hard I couldn’t help erupting again, proof, if proof were needed, that I must be demon-possessed. Anyone normal would have backed off at that point, but I saw the outrage harden into something … martial. He tightened his hold on me, his bony old fingers digging into my shoulders.

“Out, unclean spirit! Out, spawn of Beelzebub!” He shook me so hard my teeth rattled. “Begone, enemy of the faith, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

“Are you out of your mind?” Suddenly, Savaric was there beside me, his hand on Baldwin’s arm. “Leave this man alone, for God’s sake!”

The archbishop turned his mad blue eyes on the newcomer. “This man is possessed by the foul fiend!”

Savaric tugged the old man’s clutching hand free of my shoulder. “Don’t be a fool. He’s afflicted with nothing worse than seasickness—he’s been like this ever since we passed Start Point. There’s no devil in him, just a sorrowful heart and a weak stomach.” His black eyes were amused. “Isn’t that so, John?”

“Aye, sir.” I nodded gratefully.

Baldwin reattached his claw to my shoulder. “This man must undergo exorcism. Fell forces are at work here. Look at that sky.” He indicated the lowering clouds, great anvil-like thunderheads. “There is nothing natural about such furious tumult! See the anger in the waves that pile up against us! This is a storm raised in fury at the presence of the Fiend.”

Over Baldwin’s shoulder I could see the sails of the other ships dipping wildly, disappearing into deep troughs between the waves. Wind was whipping foam off the tops of the waves, sending streamers of spume into the air like battle-banners. Then it began to rain so hard it was as if the two elements of air and sea were attempting to reconcile one with the other to make a single watery hell.

With the rain thrashing down upon him, Baldwin roared on. “I cast you out, Demon, in the name of He who stilled the seas and the wind and the storm …” A great growl of thunder overhead: a personal message from God. “You see!” Baldwin cried triumphantly. “By all the saints, by the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael …”

A wave walloped us, sending men staggering like drunks. Even the archbishop couldn’t keep his feet in such conditions, but it didn’t stop him. “Saint Thaddeus, Saint Matthias, Saint Barnabas …”

Another blast of thunder, as if the skies were splitting apart, and then lightning struck the mainmast. There was a wrenching sound. Men screaming and crying out for protection, for God, for their mothers …

Wind wailed and water crashed and the ship’s timbers creaked
and shrieked. Savaric had rivulets of blood running down his face. Hammer and Saw helped him up, their hair plastered to their skulls, making them gaunt and ethereal, like starved angels. I made out Rosamund with her arm hooked hard around an upright timber. Red Will was on his knees beside her, carroty hair as dark as a rat’s, his mouth open in a howl.

Savaric’s voice boomed out. “Dear God, humbly we beseech Thee to guard Thy servants on this ship …”

“Oh blessed Saint Thomas!” old Baldwin roared now. “Intercede for our souls, most holy of the holy saints, in whose name a multitude of miracles has been achieved. Thomas of Canterbury, aid us in our terror—”

“Saint Thomas!” someone else cried out, and then other crewmen and soldiers were down on their knees, their ghost-like faces turned up to Heaven, all crying upon the name of the celebrated saint.

“Saint Thomas, I will always pray to you if you save me now,” moaned one man.

“I promise to visit your shrine!”

“I will pay two silver shillings …”

The ship pitched suddenly downwards. Men were screaming and sliding down the deck. One of the skiffs came loose from its fastenings and went flying through the air, tossed as lightly as a leaf, before disappearing into the murk, followed by two of the crew who had been taking shelter beneath it. Above the tall forecastle of our ship, waves towered like black mountains.
If they break and fall upon us we’re all lost
, I thought.

“… in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end …” Savaric’s voice fighting with the thunder.

My hand went to the pendant around my neck and I clutched the Nail of Treves in my palm. The only light left in the world in that dark moment seemed to be the light I remembered in the
Moor’s half-moon eyes as he laughed at me for my fears, and that light engulfed me, flooded through me.
If this is how I must go, it could be worse, far worse …

On and on it went, the noise, the chaos. I held fast to the side, feeling the ship bucking beneath me. The next wave hit. For a moment it was as if the sky had fallen; then there was a shivering of the air, a change of pressure. My whole being trembled, inside and out, and suddenly we seemed to have passed through some barrier between worlds and were out the other side with light streaming down through a hole in the clouds like a beam from the Eye of God.

My knees felt weak; I was dizzy, with elation and relief. Looking down at my palm, I found a dark red mark clearly impressed in its centre. A mark like a cross. Tiny, but a cross.

It’s just a nail, you numbskull
, I chided myself.
There’s nothing supernatural about it
.

“Saint Thomas, you have saved us! Thank you, thank you!” Red Will pressed his palms together in fervent prayer. Then he turned to the archbishop. “He appeared to me, wreathed in white light, and said, ‘Be not afraid, for I, Thomas, have been appointed by the Lord as guardian of this fleet.’ ”

“Amen!” Baldwin seized upon this dubious endorsement with gusto. He fell to his knees in dramatic style; you would not think such an old man could be so robust. “A marvel! A wonder! Saint Thomas à Becket, blessed martyr, we praise your name!” He kissed the ampulla of holy water he wore around his neck, held it aloft. “Blessed Saint Thomas!”

“Saint Thomas, Saint Thomas!”

“A miracle!”

The cries rang out around the ship, and other clerics came up from where they had been huddling below decks like frightened mice to hear about the wondrous manner of our salvation. Before
long several others attested to seeing the remarkable apparition. And soon our deliverance from the storm was officially declared a miracle worked by Saint Thomas of Canterbury.

It was a tatter-sailed fleet that made its way down the Portuguese coast, heading for Lisbon. There was no more talk of exorcism (though Archbishop Baldwin gave me a hard stare whenever our paths crossed) but much talk of miracles. Soldiers and crew, even nobles and commoners, were talking to one another in halting bursts of English and French, brought together by shared disaster, telling how they had been convinced of their own death until they saw the golden glow of Saint Thomas, his hand held over the ship in protection, anxious to be part of the miracle themselves. Within days, everyone was telling the same tale, the discrepancies forgotten, the other saints invoked in their time of need conveniently passed over in favour of the great English martyr who, like a storm himself, had carried all before him, leaving nothing but debris in his wake.

The doubts I had about the “miracle” I kept to myself, remembering the hysteria of all those desperate people in the churches of England, clutching at the thinnest straws of hope, convincing themselves that magic existed, that dead people were looking down from Heaven and singling them out for special favour.

What was really strange, though, was that after the storm I had no more seasickness. I made my way round the ship, marvelling at this welcome change in my fortune, enjoying the unfamiliar freedom of movement, even taking in the view. The sea! It was huge, stretching uninterrupted to the horizon. The sunsets were spectacular: I couldn’t get enough of the sight of that ball of fire sending out streamers of scarlet and gold into the darkening waters, night after night, only to rise again over the land every morning. It was
a bigger miracle for me than our survival of the storm. The darkest of hours, followed by a glimmer of golden light.

By the time we arrived at Lisbon we’d been at sea for over two months. We were all wild to rove after being confined to the cramped quarters of the ship, and it looked a sort of paradise, this city. Dry land! Taverns! Ale! Proper food! The castle atop the hill appeared fine and sturdy and benevolent, the authoritative stamp of man’s hand on the landscape after all these weeks of being held in nature’s thrall. There were tumbles of flowers on the cliffs, bright sails on the boats in the inner harbour, a forest of masts in the sheltered waters of the outer harbour; people milling about the quays, women amongst them …

The excited chatter became lewd. Quickfinger grinned. “I never had a Spanish one, but I warrant after dark they’re a’ the same.”

“Who’s waiting till dark? Not me!”

“Hope the whores are cheap.”

Quickfinger scoffed. “I’ve never had to pay for a woman in my life!”

Hammer and I exchanged glances. We knew this to be untrue, but who would want to point that out?