King of the Middle March (19 page)

I
S ALL WAR UNHOLY
?

When armies fight, do they always both claim that God is on their side?

Does Mother Church have to speak with a tongue of fire?

Do innocent and helpless people always get caught up in it?

My eyelids are drooping. Five times I have vomited, and my throat's so sore. My head's reeling.

Merlin told me once that if only I could ask the right questions…

From my room in the tower-house, I watched a boat little larger than our landing skiff skimming between us and the island that is called Ugli and looks so pretty. She had two masts, one about twenty-five feet tall and one in the stern much shorter, and she was skipping and bouncing over the waves. The very strong west wind was blowing a gale and pushing her onshore.

The helmsman swung the boat round to face me; she came racing in, and I doubled down the ninety-four steps and ran to the water to meet her.

The moment she crunched into the gravel, her two sails were like huge white birds struggling in an invisible net; her rigging whipped and cracked; at the top of the mainmast, the little windpennant whirred.

There were only seven people aboard: the helmsman and his mate, and two bearded men and three women wearing strange crimson wimples that reached below their waists, and walnut-colored skirts down to their ankles.

The older man called out to me. I couldn't understand him.

“Greetings in God!” I said, and steadied the bow.

The man frowned.

“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Français?”

“Français. Oui, oui.”

“Moi aussi. Un peu.”

The man shook his head and spoke to his companion. “Allah go with you!” he said to me.

The same words the dying man in Coucy said, and the traders in Venice. They were Saracens.

The older man disembarked, and the younger one followed him, carrying a long box like a coffin. They left the three women to look after themselves, and they all got the bottoms of their skirts wet. They chirruped like springtime finches.

Leaving the helmsman and his mate to haul down the sails, I led the Saracens up to our tower-house, but no one was there, so I took them to Milon's house. Milon had gone off to discuss rules of conduct with Villehardouin, but his priest, Pagan, was in the hall. So were at least a dozen knights and their squires, and Bertie was still lying in the corner on a heap of straw.

At first, the Saracens thought we were Zarans. The older man looked like thunder and his eyebrows twitched when Pagan explained who we are and how we've recaptured Zara, and told him we are sailing to Jerusalem.

To begin with, though, he was quite courteous and so was Pagan.

He said his name was Nasir, and he was a singing teacher.

“Like Ziryab!” I cried. “I've learned about him.”

Nasir stroked his black beard. He told us the young man was his disciple and was called Zangi. He told us the women were his two wives and his daughter.

“Two wives!” I exclaimed.

“The other two are at home,” Nasir replied. “Allah has spared them.”

Four wives! No Englishwoman would agree to that!

“You filthy swine!” growled one of Milon's knights.

“What are your names?” I asked the women.

“They have names for me,” Nasir rasped. “Not for you.”

“Who do you think you are?” another knight demanded, and he stepped towards Nasir. “This is our place, not yours.”

“You hypocrites!” snapped Nasir. “What do you care about your holy places? You use your tents as churches. All you want is our wealth. Our gold and silks and spices…”

Pagan and Milon's men looked at each other. They've exchanged insults with Saracens before.

“Keep your stinking thoughts to yourself!” said the first knight.

“Or I'll cut your tongue out,” said the other.

“You're pests!” said Nasir. “Swarms of flies without wings. You infidels! You attack people of your own faith.”

The Frenchmen started to mutter then. They grew restless.

“You're pigs!” said Nasir. “Leprous pigs. The sons of sows!”

At this, Pagan pointed at the Saracen women. “They've stolen
their color from night,” he jeered. “They've stolen their breath from old latrines.”

“You yellow-faced Christian,” Nasir snarled. “The nation of the Cross will fall.”

Pagan raised both hands. “In the name of God…,” he yelled.

Nasir stood up. He looked like one of the angry Old Testament prophets.

“In the name of Allah!” he retorted, and his voice was trembling. “We have a gift for you.”

He stepped over to Zangi, then beckoned the three women. They huddled over the coffin-box. Then there was a terrible clatter and they sprang apart, all five of them brandishing scimitars and howling.

“Allah! Hand of Allah! Allah!” they howled.

Everyone ducked and dived and scrambled. We all drew our short knives.

“Jihad!” roared the singing teacher. “The vengeance of God has come down on you!”

They killed three of us and wounded four more. They tried to cut Bertie in half, but Pagan threw himself over his body, and so they killed him instead.

But there were more of us. Milon's knights overpowered Nasir and then Zangi, and slit their throats, and disarmed the women.

The women clutched their own throats and wailed.

I couldn't watch anymore. Not as the men began to rip off their clothes.

I ran out.

Anywhere.

But there's nowhere. Nowhere in this dark world to hide.

Milon's men slung their five bodies into the salt water.

They won't go away, though…I don't know how to stop myself thinking.

I don't want to talk to Lord Stephen. I want to be alone.

Wounding, killing…

When is it wrong and can it ever be right?

The boy in the mangonel. Giscard. The Zaran councillors whose heads were cut off. Rampaging Frenchmen and Venetians. That man, the one I wounded. Nasir and Zangi and the women with no names. Pagan. Milon's men. All the knights in my seeing stone…

What am I to do when I cannot even tell who is innocent and helpless, and who is not?

Women killers!

How deeply the Saracens hate us.

All this hatred and suffering. How can one person make any difference at all?

T
HE CHURCH OPENED HER ARMS
.

There was nobody inside. When I walked across the marble floor I could hear my own footsteps.

All the church plate must have been looted, but high up on the north wall, beside a wind-eye, there was a bronze crucifix.

I stared up at Him and He stared down at me.

His face was so drawn. His cheekbones were almost sticking through His stretched skin.

He died for me. He died for us all. Our Savior.

Why didn't He save the Zarans? Why does He allow us to wound and kill one another? Why has He chosen to set us free?

When we hurt each other, do we also hurt Him?

Have mercy on me, O Lord. Have mercy on me.

Standing at the door, I turned back. A ray of sunlight was shining through the wind-eye. It lanced the crucifix. One moment it was flashing, the next bleeding.

A
NUN PEERED ROUND THE RIBBED OAK DOOR
.

She opened it a little, and I stepped in.

She didn't ask me anything. She just laid her calm hands on my aching shoulders and gazed at me. Then, without moving her head at all, she raised her eyes to heaven and very slightly smiled. I thought she looked like Mary.

She led me to a little fountain, its water plashing into a stone basin. Oh! I sank my face into it. My whole head. I tried to wash away everything.

“Thank you,” I said. “God go with you!”

The nun looked puzzled.
“Govorite li engleski?”

“What? Is that…”

“Slavonic, yes. You speak English?”

“I am English,” I said eagerly.

She gazed at me, eyes shining; then she raised her eyes to heaven again, and smiled blissfully.

“I never meet English,” she said. “I study English. You know Oxford.”

“Well, I know about Oxford,” I replied. “Schoolmen.”

The nun clapped her hands, then took my right arm, and we walked through the cloister into a little garden protected by high walls.

“In the name of the gardener,” she said, “greetings! You know? The Gospel of John.”

Her voice was quite light, and reminded me of Lady Alice's, but the way she talked was spare and rather hesitant.

“This is the garden of spiritual love,” she told me. She shook her head. “Not in bloom yet. Not in December. Look!” she said, stooping to a plant with white-spotted leaves. “Jerusalem Cowslips. Or you say Mary's Milkdrops?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Lady Alice would. She's my stepmother. In England.”

“Here is a passion dock,” the nun said. “Yellow Archangel. Ladder to Heaven.”

“This is Saint John's Wort,” I said. “We pick it on Saint John's Eve and put it outside each door. And under our pillows.…”

The nun laughed. “Nuns no!” she said. “This is Aaron's Rod. And here spikenard: Steps of Christ.”

“Where do they all come from, these holy flowers?”

“I grow them. I send for them.”

“Send?”

“From other
samostan.
” She screwed up her eyes and smiled. “Slavonic!” she said. “Monastery! I send for them from other monastery and nunnery. Other country.”

“How can you send plants? They'd arrive more dead than alive.”

“Like you,” said the nun.

I groaned. “It's so peaceful here. My head!”

The nun smiled like the sun in the earliest spring.

“I could stay here forever,” I said.

“You wrap them in waxed cloth, and sew the cloth and smear it with honey,” the nun said in her light, bright voice. “Then powder it with flour. You can send plants wherever you like.”

We sat side by side on a little bench. The December sun winked and warmed my back. How much time seeped away, I do not know.

Then the monastery bell began to toll, and the nun stood up and smoothed down her habit and straightened her white wimple. Her skin was unblemished as a baby's.

I began to shiver again.

“You stay until you are ready,” she said.
“Da?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But…”

“Sshh!”

For just a moment one of her hands alighted on my head, light as a butterfly's wing. “I am Sister Cika,” she said. “You?”

“Arthur.”

“Arthur?”

“Well, Sir Arthur de Gortanore.”

“Let Jesus be born in the cradle of your heart,” she said gently. “We expect you.”

And then, like a summer stream, she glided away.

I walked for hours and hours before I came to that ribbed oak door, I'm sure I did. I don't know why I knocked on it. I didn't know it was a nunnery.

But when, later, I let myself out, I saw I was only a very little way from our tower-house. I must have gone round in circles.

O
NE OF GOD'S GREATEST GIFTS IS MEMORY,” LORD
Stephen said.

Christmas Day. We were sitting right up on the wall. Zara was at our feet.

“When things are going poorly,” he said, “memory consoles us. We remember better days.”

“Writing is partly remembering too,” I said. “My grandmother thinks unless you can remember something it's not worth knowing, but there's too much knowledge for that.”

The bells of the round church, the one that looks like a misshapen loaf, began to ring. Its patron saint is Donat, but

 

I know not

who or what

Donat was.

 

“Christmas has taken us by surprise,” Lord Stephen said. “We've scarcely prepared for it.”

“Christmas is like a fold,” I said. “That's what I wrote once. And we're all inside it, eating and drinking and keeping warm and singing…”

“Not this year.”

“…but we know the year's hunger and terrors and anxieties
and opportunities and sorrows are still there on the outside. We know they're all waiting for us.”

Lord Stephen nodded. “They are,” he said. “Shall we pray for Lady Judith? Shall we pray for everyone at Holt?”

“And Caldicot,” I said. “When I think of Christmas, I'll always think of Caldicot. Everyone hauling Yule logs up to the manor house, and calling out to each other. The white bags of their breath. Wat Harelip disguised as a gabbling wild man, and Lady Helen pretending not to recognize him. And Merlin's salmon-leap.”

“What was that?

“You know Merlin.”

“No one does,” Lord Stephen said with a faint smile.

“We had a leaping contest, and Merlin jumped forty-seven feet!”

Lord Stephen looked at me, and very slowly he shook his head.

“The songs and the tabor and the boar's head,” I said, “and the holly and yew and ivy and mistletoe, and the riddles…”

Lord Stephen gently lifted his right hand.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“No, no. It's all right.” He lowered his head, and swallowed. “Even memory is a double-edged sword,” he said. “Consolation and melancholy.”

“We used to sing this carol,” I told him.

“Lady, we thank you
With hearts meek and mild
For the good you have given us
With your sweet child.”

“Yes,” said Lord Stephen. “There are several things to give thanks for. I never expected it, but Bertie is going to live, and it seems he'll make a full recovery.”

“Taddeo thought he might,” I said.

“And you're looking a bit more like yourself,” Lord Stephen added. “And let us give thanks Marquis Boniface has rejoined us.”

“These weeks have been terrible,” I said.

“Well, we'll soon find out whether it was worth his going to Rome,” Lord Stephen said. “Anyhow, the Doge won't get his way so easily now, and there'll be better discipline.”

“The bells are quickening,” I said.

“How does that song end?” Lord Stephen asked. “The one you were singing.”

“Mother, look down on me
With your sweet eyes,
Give me peace and give me bliss,
My Lady, when I die.”

“That's it,” Lord Stephen said.