Pillars of Light (51 page)

Then a hand touched my brow, cupped my cheek.

“John.”

The way he said my name this time, it made something shiver deep inside me. The word was full of … what? A tone I had never heard from him or any other. Tenderness. Yes, that was the word for it.

I tried to frame his name, and remembered I had never known it.

Then an arm went around my back and the world tilted and shifted until I was sitting upright, the sun in my eyes, feeling like a straw-filled poppet.

“Here, drink this.”

I had thought I would never wish to drink water again, I had shipped so much of it. This was not salty but as sweet as wine. I gulped it greedily.

“Slow down, you’ll be sick.”

I sipped. I looked around. I was on a beach. The sun was spangling the sea. I was alive! How could that be possible?

I remembered hugging the relic, going down, down through the dark waters with its mighty weight dragging me towards the seabed, getting colder all the time, my ribs getting crushed more tightly with every second of my descent. After that … well, I had no memories, just a crazed jumble of images churning around my head.

“It’s a miracle,” I croaked—my idea of a joke, which I knew would make him laugh.

But he didn’t. He just nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, John, a miracle. Truly.”

He looked away from me for a moment and his face changed. I had always found the Moor unreadable, even at the best of times, and now he seemed more himself than he ever had before, as enigmatic as a shadow.

“I can’t believe you found me,” I managed to whisper. “Am I really alive? Perhaps I’m between worlds now. God knows, I deserve to wander in Purgatory a long time for all I have done …”

He frowned at that. “You are not in Purgatory, John. You are in the world. Now look, there are soldiers coming down from the camp, so we must get you on your feet, and I shall speak for you. Can you do that? Can you rise, with my help?”

I could. For about three seconds. Then I was down in the shingle again as if I had no backbone. From there, I asked, “Quickfinger and Hammer?” Now it was all coming back to me.

The Moor shook his head. “I’m sorry, John, I’ve seen no one else alive. Put your arm around my shoulder. Let’s try again. There. There we are. Steady, now.”

The soldiers reached us then, their footsteps crunching on the pebbles: thin, dark leathery-looking men in pointed steel caps, with curved swords at their sides. Seeing them gave me a start. What was I stupidly expecting—that they would be “our” soldiers, not the enemy? For a moment a chill ran through me. Surely they would kill me on the spot. But they didn’t seem very interested in slaughtering me. Rather, they engaged in a lengthy conversation with the Moor, in which I caught only a word here and there.

“Come, John,” the Moor said at last. “I’ll take you back to camp. The sultan will be glad to see you.” He paused. “We need as many Franj captives as we can get,” he explained. “Don’t we, lads? For ransom.”

I goggled at him in hurt disbelief. Had I been rescued so miraculously, found so miraculously, only to be sold back to the king I had failed?

“I do not think he will pay much for me, if anything,” I managed to get out.

The Moor turned his face to me, his expression as blank as a cat’s. “It’s a numbers game, John. Trust me.”

I will not pretend it was not daunting, that journey up from the shore to the Muslim camp. I had thought myself a dead man, destined for the pits of Hell, but now here I was, surprisingly ascending, through the midst of a thousands of enemy soldiers, who turned to regard me more with curiosity than hostility. I was in the midst of our foe! Never had I felt so exposed. And yet, at the same time, with the Moor’s arm around me and his charged, wiry strength bearing me up, filling me with his strange, engulfing confidence, it was like walking in a dream through flameless fire or silent monstrosities, a dream in which you know you can take no harm.

As my initial terrors lifted, I began to take in my surroundings. Everywhere I looked returned some marvel or surprise. The greatest surprise of all was the general cleanliness of this vast encampment. Where ours was all churned earth, or mud, depending on the season, and stank of piss and shit and rot, up here on the tawny hillsides order largely prevailed. We passed well-dug and well-watered latrines, picketed horses, camp-kitchens from which smells emanated that made my nose twitch. Myriad tents of many hues and patterned designs, pennants fluttering beside them, and everywhere the symbol of the crescent moon, where there were a thousand different devices in the Christian camp. An area where a dozen men, stripped to their breeches, washed and beat clothing in a channelled stream—no sign of a woman anywhere—and above this, where the diverted stream flowed into a neatly tiled area, men performed ablutions, their sleeves rolled high, washing their hands and forearms, their faces and necks, with utmost care.

The Moor saw how I stared at this sight and chuckled to himself.

As we made our way little farther up the slope there came a great, lowing note, followed by a tumble of others that shimmered on the hot air, the chant taken up by other voices on other hills, until there seemed a single great song of summoning, and I noticed that a tide of men was moving in the same direction. While I was
puzzling over this, the soldiers in front of us dropped to their knees, facing inland, knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.

The Moor stood where he was and merely cast his gaze skywards. He raised his hands to his face, closed his eyes and brushed his palms from his forehead, over his lips and down to his heart. Then he opened his eyes and looked right at me, and I felt as if my heart stopped. In that moment I knew he had just thanked God that I was alive.

On the summit of the hill a great pavilion was pitched, apricot banners flying all around it and guards stationed outside the door, big men made taller by their spiked helmets. I thought,
That must be the tent of our chief enemy, the pagan king, Saladin
, and with brief, hallucinatory clarity remembered Hammer capering across the stage with three rag-babies threaded on his lance. Then shame came over me as I recalled the Moor’s expression when I had asked my idiot question.

Even though I knew with the rational part of me that the sultan was no cannibal, and probably no other sort of monster either, it was to my great relief that we turned aside before we reached the great pavilion, to another, smaller tent pitched a little distance away. The Moor said something to the soldiers and they debated for a moment, then he ducked inside and disappeared from view. A short while later he came out again and beckoned me inside.

“The qadi of the army, Baha ad-Din,” he said to me, indicating a short, stout man with a carefully trimmed beard and bright, watchful eyes.

I bowed as politely as I could manage, for my legs were trembling with the effort of the long uphill walk, and the man shot a number of questions at the Moor, who answered them shortly. I watched as the scribe took a quill in hand, opened a small flask, dipped the quill, knocked it on the rim and then wrote something on a piece of fine-looking vellum, his hand moving swiftly, and oddly, from right to left.

“I’ve told him your name, your age and place of birth,” the Moor said quietly.

I stared at him. “Even I don’t know my age.”

“I guessed. Does it matter? I also told him you’re an acclaimed creator of illusion.”

I swallowed an hysterical laugh. “You told him I’m a conman and miracle-faker?”

“Those are not the exact words I used. I said you are an artist, and even that took some explaining.”

The scribe interrupted, firing fast questions at the Moor, who nodded and answered smoothly. Then he bowed to the man, took me by the arm and manoeuvred me outside.

“I will bring you paper, inks and some charcoal if there is any fine enough to be used for such a task,” he said, once we were out in the sunlight again.

“What … task?”

“We need you to draw the True Cross for us.”

“What?” The word came out at so high a pitch that it was more of a womanish squeal.

The Moor made a minute gesture with his right hand, one I knew to mean
be calm
. He had used the same gesture in the Lady Chapel, and at Rye. “The True Cross makes up part of the surrender terms to ransom the people of the city. And it is missing.” He eyed me steadily. “You were seen fleeing Akka’s harbour, you and Quickfinger with his pale blond hair, and another, small and dark, whom I take to be Hammer. And the cross is, apparently, missing from the city’s treasury. You can see how we might make a connection.”

Panic flared. Was I about to be denounced as a thief and punished—hanged, or worse? But no: I was not thinking clearly, was not thinking at all. Something jagged through my head, a sort of pain, or terror, or guilt.

He kept watching me, his half-moon eyes gleaming. “You are not being accused, John.” He held my gaze. “We can overlook the attempted theft. What we need from you is your memory, to draw the True Cross in all the detail you can recall.”

“If I even saw the cross—”

“John …” His voice was soft. “Don’t allow a small crime to stand in the way of the salvation of three thousand people.”

I swallowed. “Is there no one else who could do this for you?”

“Those who recall seeing the relic taken from the field at Hattin have given wildly contradictory descriptions—it was, after all, four years ago. The sultan’s brother remembers it being about so high.” He swept his hands over a yard apart. “And so wide …” Almost the same again.

“That’s far larger than the piece I … saw.”

“It was broken up after its capture. The sultan ordered it done after the victory, to show the Christians how little their relic meant, how little power it had.”

“What happened to the rest of it?”

He shrugged. “No one seems to know.”

“And the gold?”

“Melted down, and long since been used in coin.”

“It’s going to be expensive to recreate.”

The Moor spread his hands. “There is hardly a bezant left in the sultan’s coffers. All has been spent on this war. He keeps nothing for himself.”

“Well, where are you going to get it from?”

He looked thoughtful. “That is my problem. Your task is to concentrate on the look of the relic, on the patterns and designs, the placement of the jewels.”

I thought about that small, heavy object, dragging me down through the dark waters, away from the fires above. Then, out of nowhere, I thought about it in quite a different way: not small, not
heavy, but suddenly vast and buoyant. My head breaking the surface. The sun on my face …

That couldn’t be right—my mind playing tricks on me again.

“Are you remembering?” the Moor asked. He was watching me intensely, a curious look on his face.

“Sort of,” I said, trying to shake the odd feeling of immense weight followed by immense weightlessness. Something was nagging at me. Something important. Another fleeting sensation of the trailing edges of a dream, like one of my fits about to take hold. Then the feeling passed. I blinked. “They fired Will and Ned over the city walls. In their trebuchet.”

That jolted him, I could see. “May their souls find rest,” he said.

“They’re all dead, not just Ned and Will,” I said, the full horror if it returning to me. Tears fell unchecked. “Saw at the Spring Head, Quickfinger and Hammer lost to the sea, Ezra in battle …” Snot began to drip from my nose.

The Moor was quiet for several paces, taking this in. Then he said simply, “Come with me.”

Not the hospital tent, I thought, my nostrils twitching as if they could already smell the rot and filth. Memories of our own still haunted my sleep, making me wake sweating in the depths of night. But yes, it was the hospital tent he led me to.

Inside, it was quiet and cool. Men in dark robes ghosted between the beds, carrying instruments and flasks, even a small brass brazier giving off some sweet-smelling smoke. Lines of pallets bearing men in various states of damage—the usual missing limbs and hands, crush-wounds from hooves and maces, holings from arrows and crossbolt quarrels. There was some groaning, but nothing like the hell-shrieks of our field hospital.

“They are dosed with poppy syrup,” the Moor said. “It aids
the healing process if the pain recedes—the body relaxes and stops expending all its energy on defending the wound site. Also, every man here knows that if it is his time to die he will be received into Heaven with the acclamation of martyrdom, and his family will be well provided for.” He paused, smiling at my expression. “Though they and we would much rather they lived.”

He led me through the long tent to a screened area at the far end. As we rounded the screen, my eyes were drawn to the man who sat cross-legged beside the pallet: a striking fellow, his back very upright, with a fine-planed face and large, expressive black eyes, trained with rapt attention on the patient. He wore, I noticed, the same costume as the guards outside the great pavilion; at his side on the ground sat a polished steel helm. In his lap were roses: pale-pink briar roses, soft and incongruous against the heavy leather and chain mail of his armour.

As we appeared he looked up, startled, then shot to his feet as if caught doing something he should not. The roses scattered, shedding their fragrance. Some of the petals fell upon the bed, where the patient reached out to them. I stared. Blinked, and stared again.

“Ezra!”

I think her shock was the equal to my own. She screwed her eyes up as if finding them untrustworthy.

“I thought you were dead!” I said hoarsely.

“So did I!”

Suddenly we were grinning at one another, dizzied by surprised delight. The young soldier began to move away, discomfited. The look he gave me was not friendly.

“Malek!” called Ezra, then followed this with something foreign that made him turn back with a shy smile. He placed his hand on his heart, bowed to us and walked away.

In just these few days she had learned their language? I began to think I was dreaming.

“He saved me,” Ezra said, swivelling so that she could follow his progress until he was out of sight. The Moor scooped up the briars and laid them on the bed. “I was on the berm and one of their archers shot me and I fell in the ditch. Thought I was going to die there with all those soldiers and horses, and Malek, well, he leaned down off his horse—it’s a lovely chestnut called Asfar—and he hauled me up. And look!” She leaned, wincing, to the other side of the pallet and pulled up her bow. “He saved this, too!”