Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  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!”

  Such a paragon, I thought. “No doubt he saved you for the prisoner exchange,” I said sourly.

  “I … no …” She looked puzzled. “No one’s said anything about ransom or exchange or anything.” She laughed. “I don’t think King Richard’s going to be paying to get a woman back!”

  “Shhh … be careful.”

  “They dressed my wound, John—you think they don’t know?” She grabbed my hand. “But John, how are you here? It’s like magic—first the Moor, now you. Next it’ll be Quicksilver and Will!”

  I looked away from her shining eyes. “I don’t think so.” I steeled myself to tell her what had happened to them, but she was already chattering on.

  “And I met the sultan! He comes to see me every day, despite everything else he has to do,
can you imagine? He brings me fruit, to help me get better. They bring him fruit every day from Damascus, wherever that is. Imagine that! Fruit, from his own fruit basket.” She grabbed my hand. “They’ve been so nice to me, John, courtly, like I’m some sort of princess. No one’s ever treated me like that before. And Malek …” She looked down at the roses, and when she looked up again her eyes were full of some kind of wonder. “Well, he’s been lovely.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “John, I don’t want to go back. You won’t make me, will you?”

  I stared at her. “You want to stay with the enemy?”

  “They’re not my enemy,” she said, snorting out her derision.

  “But they’re Muslims,” I persisted, something bitter in me finding voice, something … disappointed. “They’re foreign, they have foreign ways, speak a foreign language—”

  She reeled off an unintelligible stream of gibberish that made the Moor laugh. He corrected her and she repeated back what he said, twice, until she’d got the strange sounds right. When she looked back at me it was with defiance and a sort of pride. “See? I’m learning. It won’t take long. Everyone’s helping.”

  “I bet they are.” Jealousy made me sharp. “What about our plans? We were going to find some land, raise animals, remember?”

  Her face fell. “I didn’t mean to be disloyal, not to you. You’re my friend. We are still friends, aren’t we?” She sounded just like me with the Moor, I thought.

  I shook my head. “Sorry. It’s just … well, a lot to think about, a lot to take in. I’m glad you’re alive and well, Ezra. I really am.”

  “You can call me Rosamund now. Malek does. The Moor says it’s Latin, and means ‘rose of the world’ or some such nonsense,” she said, colouring. “Hence the …” Her fingers brushed the flower petals.

  I must have looked miserable or embarrassed, for the Moor stepped in now and, businesslike, applied himself to examining her dressing. “Go sit in the sun outside, John,” he told me, and, glad to be dismissed, I pushed my way through the tent flap and stood blinking in the bright light, I had been transported to another world, one in which none of the old rules applied.

  Why was I so disturbed that Ezra—Rosamund—should choose to stay here, among these foreigners? Had I not myself been distraught at the idea of being sent away when the Moor had mentioned the prisoner exchange? Would I not willingly have traded any chance of returning to England, for staying here—anywhere—with him?

  But she’s a woman, a small voice inside me prompted. That’s different.

  It was different. And yet maybe it was different in ways that mattered even less. What awaited Ez—Rosamund back in England? Returned to the army with her true identity revealed, she’d surely be reduced to a camp-whore; in England, she’d end up on the streets, doing the same thing. I didn’t know what awaited her here. Perhaps the respect with which she had been treated by the young soldier who had saved her, and by the sultan himself, would prevail. Perhaps she could make a better life here than she could back home. Or perhaps not. I did not know. But I couldn’t help thinking about the hatred on the faces of the people of Akka, what had happened to Will and to Ned, catapulted, screaming, over the walls …

  And the beaten, burned Jews of London …

  And the captured Muslims set alight like candles on the battlefield …

  There is a savagery in all of us, I thought, then caught myself thinking it. Savage. My own name, or at least the one I had been given. Yes, a savage in all of us. But perhaps there were acts of grace that might redeem us.

  Later that night, when they brought me the drawing things the Moor had ordered, I was filled with determination to conjure the image of the relic. I forced my mind back to that first glimpse of it in the storeroom in the citadel cellars: the gleam of the gold, the glint of the gems. The strange charge I had felt from the Nail of Treves.

  I reached up to touch my charm. It was not there.

  You’d think that now I was reunited with my friend, his parting gift would no longer carry the significance for me that it had. But the loss of it struck me like a fist.

  And now I could not remember what the fragment of the Cross had looked like at all. Gold encased, yes, with the old wood showing through almost black at one end. But the details? The ornamentation? Gone like smoke. Would it matter? Surely an old piece of wood dressed up in any cover of gold would do the trick. Memories were flawed and chancy things, as even the Moor had said, two people’s accounts of the same object or event rarely matching. But all it took was one doubt. All those people …

  Back to the storeroom I led my unwilling mind. Look in the chest: remember pulling out the cross, the True Cross, or rather the thing masquerading as it, remember the dancing light of the sconce playing across the gold, flickering in the gems …

  It was no good. I could not retrieve the memory. Had I looked at the relic at any other time? No, after it was bundled away inside my cloak it had stayed wrapped, right up till the moment the ocean swallowed me, fire all around, the air choked with the screams of burning men. God’s teeth, what was I going to do?

  It’s a funny thing, the mind. Reach after something, chase it like a dog chases a rat, and it will guard its secrets. It’s only when you give up that it teases you with a glimpse of the thing you were searching for. And sometimes a glimpse is enough.

  The strange thing is that it wasn’t a glimpse of the cross in the storeroom that came to me then. No, the quality of the light was different—brighter, sharper. The detail was still there, though: a ruby at the centre of a ring of bosses in the gold, etched lines connecting it to the next precious setting, and the next. Pearls here, emeralds there: a gaudy, tawdry thing. I almost smiled at the apparent fakeness of such opulence. If I closed my eyes, I could feel the stones, rough and hard beneath my fingertips …

  I began to draw.

  Zohra chose two of her father’s best robes and tunics, a warm cloak, a sleeping blanket, and his favourite soft leather slippers, old and battered but perfectly moulded over the years to the shape of his feet, for him to take into the hostage quarters.

  He took one look at the slippers and threw them down. “I can’t be seen in these! Bring me the yellow ones.”

  “But, Baba, you always say they hurt your feet, the yellow ones.”

  “Never! I’ve never said that. Can’t wear filthy old things like that in front of the Franj. They’re fit only for the fire now. Like their owner.”

  “Don’t say such things!” She took the old brown qundara back upstairs and came back with the stiff yellow ones, feeling unaccountably sorrowful.

  When it came time to say goodbye, Baltasar let her hug him, standing unresponsive for several moments before suddenly seeming to remember who she was and what was happening, and then he almost crushed her in his embrace. When they came apart she saw his eyes were wet.

  “Oh, Baba!” she wailed.

  At last Sara stepped between them. “I’ll look after him,” she said. “You look after my son for me. You must make him go. Promise me.” She leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Tell him whatever it takes to make him leave the city with you, do you understand me?” The look she gave Zohra was powerfully communicative, and Zohra nodded, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Sara brushed them away with the thumb of her one remaining hand. “I know you will, and I bless you for it.” She stepped back and spoke more loudly. “Pack that wound with honey-salve night and day, won’t you?”

  Nima clung to Baltasar’s legs and cried when Zohra pulled her away. She had grown fond of the old bear of a man in the short time they had been together, perhaps because he was the only one who ever had time for her babbling; perhaps because he became, while he was with her, like a grandfather she had lost. Zohra took her upstairs and brought out all the old wooden toys she and the boys had shared as children and left her playing happily while she gathered clothes and a wide-toothed comb for Sorgan, and wrapped carefully in a white cloth a small cake she had made for him with flour and eggs and
honey bought from the new supplies coming into the city. Something he would find later when he opened up his things. Something that might make him think of her …

  But when she tried to give him the bundle down in the hallway Sorgan refused to take it, not wanting Mohammed Azri to see him being treated like a child.

  “Sorgan, look at me.”

  “Want to go now.” He pulled away from her.

  “I know you do. But, Sorgan, I’m leaving the city. I may not see you … for a while.”

  “All right.” For a moment he looked thoughtful. “Will you have lamb to eat tonight?”

  Abruptly, Zohra’s eyes swam with tears.

  Sorgan was alarmed. “Don’t cry! I am sure you will have lamb too.” Without warning, he seized her in a fierce embrace, and that unexpected gesture caused her tears to spill. Muffled against his shoulder, she gasped out, “You are my brother and I love you, do you understand? Wherever you are, wherever I am, that will never change. Will you remember that?”

  Embarrassed, he pulled away from her. “I have to go now. Mohammed is waiting for me.”

  Silently, Zohra tailed him to the door and handed her bundle to the smith, who took it from her with a wry smile. “I will see you again soon, insh’allah,” Mohammed Azri told her.

  “Insh’allah.”

  Zohra watched them go down the street, merging with the others who had chosen to go as hostages, until they turned the corner and disappeared from view. She had never felt so bereft in her life. To go back into a house that was empty of all its normal inhabitants felt bleak.

  That night, she could not settle, could not sleep. She crept about, feeling uncomfortable and out of sorts, then packed away the things that had been left out and set the house to rights so that it was in order for when they returned. If they ever would …

  It was important not to think about that. Instead, she rehearsed the words she would say to Nathanael when he came back from the qadi’s office as she went from room to room, neatening drapes and closing drawers. All the sleeping-blankets she folded and stored away, rolled up the rugs to keep the dust off them, shut the kitchen things into the larder. The pigeon loft she swept and cleaned, locked the door to the terrace.