City of God

by City of God (retail) (epub)

  ‘Majesty,’ began Ramon. Lusignan’s part in the failure of the dreadful battle of Hattin was well known, but the king held up a hand and the knight fell into a disgruntled silence.

  ‘Whatever might be said about the Order’s failures in the Holy Land, their botched command here was yet worse. I inherited a land of foment from the Temple, and I am not pleased to see that red cross on white landing on my island. De Fougères here tells me you are simply passing through. I urge you to do so with all haste, for your very presence on this island endangers a fragile peace. I will brook no troubles caused by you, and if such should arise, I shall take up the matter with your master at Acre in the spring.’

  The king lapsed into silence, glaring at the two of them, and Ramon paused for some time. Arnau glanced at his friend and realised that the man was doing what he had to in order to suppress anger and still respond calmly. Finally, the older knight nodded.

  ‘Majesty, we intend no trouble or harm. Indeed, we would rather move on as soon as possible, though we are told by master sailors that the currents east of here in the winter are not favourable.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the king said, his face still sour and disapproving. ‘Many a fleet has met with disaster in these waters. The king of England conquered Cyprus from the Greeks as a consequence of just such a calamity. Very well, there is a church in the city – the chapel of the Virgin – a monastery church which I grudgingly granted to your order several years ago. It is manned only by a caretaker, but it has accommodation attached and you may remain there during your stay on the island. While in my domain, you shall remove those red-crossed mantles and move around in a more discreet fashion, lest you stir up trouble.’

  Again there was a pause while Ramon fought the urge to refuse such an order. In the end, he simply bowed his head.

  ‘Very well, you are dismissed,’ the king announced loftily. ‘With good fortune I will hear and see nothing more of you until you leave.’

  A dismissive wave of his hand bade them leave, and the nobleman who had admitted them now began to shoo them from the hall. Ramon and Arnau turned and strode proudly from the room, chins high and red crosses displayed proudly. Once they were back through the door and retrieving their weapons, Arnau sighed. ‘That could have gone better.’

  Ramon shook his head. ‘I think not. Aimery de Lusignan has a strong reputation. He is astute and no schemer like his brother. If he is as set against the Order as appears to be the case, then he likely has good reason, and he would never have welcomed us more than he did, no matter what we said.’

  He turned to the haughty nobleman, who was busy closing the doors behind them. ‘Could you direct us to this chapel of which the king spoke?’ he asked with forced politeness.

  The man raised his face a little, looking down his nose at Ramon as he turned and pointed off to the south, down a street roughly parallel with the one they had taken upon their arrival. ‘Follow the Argetis road there. Towards the edge of town, you will pass an old Saracen stable house on the left, with many arches. The next church beyond that belongs to your temple… for now,’ he added ominously.

  Nodding the barest thanks possible, the two men retraced their steps until they emerged into the square. The sun had now dipped below the horizon and a warm evening glow filled the city. Sebastian stood with the horses, the bored expression on his face a welcome change from the constant grimace of illness he had borne for the past few weeks.

  ‘What now?’ Arnau said.

  ‘Now we find this church and settle in for the night. My liturgical hours are all awry since the voyage. I can rarely tell when we are supposed to hold service, and it will be good to do so in a church once more.’

  Arnau nodded. It was relief enough simply to be standing on a surface that did not roll with the swell of waves after so long at sea. Actually kneeling in a church would feel like the most sinful luxury now.

  Crossing the square once more, they made for the street of the chapel. A small market had been operating in the thoroughfare, and now the stall owners were closing up and boxing away their goods for the night. As Arnau and his friends passed they were unsurprised, but further disheartened, to note how they uniformly turned away from the three passing Templars, an air of distrust and seething resentment filling the street.

  Arnau glanced momentarily at Sebastian and noted that with the hand not on his horse’s reins he rubbed his thumb reflexively across the icon of the Virgin, a small wooden square covered with the sacred image depicted in ancient, flaking paint. Every few moments he peered myopically at it.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked the young squire, gesturing at the icon. ‘Why do you examine it so?’

  Sebastian looked sheepish and folded the small image away in his hand, shaking his head. ‘It is nothing. Superstition, or so people tell me, Brother Valbona.’

  ‘Superstition almost always has roots in reality,’ Arnau said, quoting Balthesar easily. ‘And when linked to the Holy Mother, it can be of great import.’

  The young man looked hesitant for a moment, then opened his palm again and peered down at the icon. ‘My ma said that it cried on the morning my papa went to war and never came back. I’d always thought it just a story, but I went to grasp it at ma’s deathbed, and it was wet then too. With all the angry looks we’re getting and this unknown world, I keep my eye upon it.’

  Arnau nodded slowly. He wanted to tell the lad that it was just coincidence and that they were perfectly safe, the icon just a picture. But the Lord worked in mysterious ways, and stranger things that this had been proven true over the years.

  ‘I am enjoying this less and less,’ he muttered to no one in particular as they passed the last stall and began to make their way out of the urban centre.

  ‘Caravanserai,’ Ramon noted, gesturing off to the left after a lengthy walk. Arnau looked across and noted the building the nobleman at the palace had described. A large two-storey structure which displayed distinctly Arabian-looking architecture, and would have been quite at home in parts of Iberia, stood back from the street, an arcade of horseshoe arches facing them.

  ‘I’m unfamiliar with the word.’

  ‘It’s an Eastern one. It’s a sort of hostel and stable for travellers, especially merchant caravans.’

  ‘Then that must be our church,’ Arnau said, pointing ahead along the road.

  They walked their horses on, closing on the small monastic complex. Despite its diminutive size, it was clearly more than just a church. A fairly austere golden stone façade caught the last glow of evening, giving its masonry the hue of rich honey. A plain wooden door sat beneath a window like a half moon over a stone horizon. The church itself seemed to be a heavy, squat rectangular structure with little decoration. Two low grey domes rose from the roof, each surmounted with a golden cross with an extra, slanted crossbar at the lower end. The windows of the church were high and small, set into the stonework below the domes. Beside the church stood two more structures of the same style of construction, connected by a wall taller than a man.

  ‘This would appear to be it,’ Ramon agreed. ‘A home away from home. Aimery probably thinks such a small church is an insult to us, but then he has not seen humble Rourell. Come, let us enter.’

  Crossing to the door, he slid from the saddle and tried the handle. The door remained resolutely shut. As Arnau and Sebastian dismounted, Ramon rapped heavily on the door and waited. There was a long pause before they heard the faint sounds of movement inside. Finally, there was a clank and a rattle, and the door crept slowly open with an ominous creak.

  ‘What do—’ began an old, cracked voice in thick Greek, before falling silent as the ageing fellow’s eyes widened at the three figures standing outside.

  ‘Good evening, Brothers,’ he managed in passable French, though looking extremely confused as he spoke, his face betraying the same distrust as every other islander they had met.

  ‘Good evening. We were directed to lodge here from the palace,’ Ramon said politely in Greek. �
��I am Ramon de Juelle, a knight of the…’ he floundered, not knowing the Greek word for a preceptory. ‘The temple,’ he settled, ‘of Rourell in Aragon, and these are my brothers, Arnau de Vallbona and Sebastian.’

  Once more Arnau found himself faintly irritated that the older brother seemed as capable as Balthesar had been of falling into any language with relative ease while Arnau still struggled and had to speak slowly as he formulated sentences.

  The old man looked relieved to hear Greek and stepped inside, gesturing for the men to follow. Arnau followed Ramon’s lead in handing his reins to Sebastian, who took them without complaint, and then followed the older knight inside.

  The church that had looked so featureless and austere from the outside was a different matter entirely inside. Arnau blinked in astonishment. The dying daylight did little to illuminate the church through the small, high windows, but lamps flickered all around the interior in brass holders, giving the whole place a warm, golden glow. It illuminated a marvel the likes of which Arnau had never seen before. Every inch of the church’s walls and columns was covered with brightly painted images. Saints and priests and heroes of old wore brightly coloured garments, hands almost touching and raised in benediction on every surface, their swarthy, exotic faces and brown hair highlighted by the golden nimbus surrounding their heads. Every figure stood against a bright-blue or red painted background, each panel edged in gold. Every surface. Every wall. Even the ceilings.

  Arnau realised he was staring in slack-jawed amazement when the old man cleared his throat meaningfully.

  ‘Sorry. This is incredible.’

  ‘Needs touching up,’ the old man replied dismissively, before gesturing out through the door and telling Sebastian to go around the side.

  ‘These are saints,’ Arnau said reverentially as the wizened man closed and locked the door.

  ‘Schismatic Greek representations of the saints,’ added Ramon, though there was little real disapproval in his voice. How could there be? This veneration was unlike anything Arnau had ever imagined, and were these not the same saints to whom the men of Rourell prayed, after all? The same Christ? The same Holy Mother and the same God? If Balthesar could see value in the Moor’s worship of God despite their heresies, then surely the Greek Church must be little more than a wayward brother to Rome?

  ‘It is incredible,’ he said again, and almost walked into a wall as he followed the others through a low doorway.

  ‘Like so many of our old churches, this one now bows to Rome,’ the old man said, and Arnau was more than a little surprised to hear a trace of bitterness in the man’s voice.

  ‘Are you not a servant of the Order?’ Arnau asked quietly as they emerged into an open dusty brown courtyard and strode towards a gate set in the wall between the two other buildings.

  The old man snorted. ‘I am the caretaker. There have only been knights of your order on the island occasionally since the days of strife. No, I am no servant of your order, nor of your oppressive Roman Church with its vicious need to control the world.’

  Arnau felt his face fall into a disapproving frown and was about to leap to the defence of his faith when he caught a warning look from Ramon.

  ‘You are of the Greek Church?’ the older knight asked.

  ‘I follow the word of the island’s patriarch, yes,’ the old man said.

  ‘Is this schismatic issue the reason no one on the island will look us in the eye?’

  The old man snorted again as they reached the gate and he slid open the bars to admit Sebastian and the horses. ‘The Order of the Temple will never be welcome on this island. Not after what you did here.’

  Arnau and Ramon shared a concerned look and waited in uncomfortable silence as the old man and Sebastian rattled off a conversation in native Greek so fast that neither knight could follow it. The squire then took the horses to one of the buildings, opening a large door and slipping inside with them. The old man then gestured at the other building and led them across to it.

  ‘I am afraid we are from a small… temple… far in the West,’ Ramon said. ‘I do not know the history of this island.’

  ‘It is not history to anyone but the young,’ the caretaker said, darkly. ‘How the lords of the Temple taxed the high and the low, the rich and the poor, how they forced evictions and reapportioned lands that had been handed down through a hundred generations of a family.’

  Again, the two knights looked at one another. The old man’s voice was becoming louder and angrier as he spoke.

  ‘How they suppressed our Church and made us worship in ways they approved. How they broke a bar from our crosses to make them look like theirs. How they pushed the people until there was nothing to do but revolt, and then, when the people took to the streets to defy the order’s oppression, how they took swords to the old and the young and filled the streets of Lefkosia with the blood of islanders.’

  Arnau felt shocked. His skin prickled as though freezing cold.

  ‘So no,’ the old man said bitterly, ‘it is not because you are not of our faith, but because you are each one of them.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause, and finally the old man straightened. ‘I was putting everything straight here and was then going to douse the lamps and return home. The key to the main door stands inside. I cannot imagine you need me further, so I shall not bother you unless you call upon me. My house stands opposite. Good night.’

  Without further ado, the caretaker strode off through the side gate. Arnau and Ramon stood for a long moment, staring at one another. Finally, Arnau hurried over to the gate and closed it, sliding the bar shut.

  ‘Shall I have Sebastian unload our gear?’

  Ramon shook his head. ‘The boy is busy with the horses and he will still be weak from his days of illness. We will do so in due course, but I fear we are perhaps a little late for vespers, since the lamps are already lit. Let us return to the church and perform our devotions.’

  With a nod, Arnau followed the older brother back into the church and into what appeared to be a presbytery in this unfamiliar, Eastern architecture. There, being the senior brother, Ramon led them through vespers, their twin voices rising for each hymn and psalm, Ramon’s alone reciting the reading and prayers. When the time came at the closing of the service for the prayer of the Lord, Arnau realised he was putting a great deal more feeling into it than usual, and noted that perhaps the old man’s tale of Templar oppression had got to him more than he’d thought.

  Our father that art in the heavens,

  hallowed be thy name;

  Thy kingdom come;

  be thy will done

  as in heaven and in earth;

  give to us this day our bread and all substance;

  and forgive us to our debtors,

  as we forgive our debtors;

  and lead us not into temptation,

  but deliver us from evil.

  Amen.

  When Ramon had given his blessing and the two men rose once more, stretching and moving stiff limbs, Arnau finally voiced what had been eating at him throughout vespers.

  ‘The old man had to be lying, wasn’t he?’

  Ramon shrugged. ‘I cannot say I liked hearing what he said, but he did not strike me as a man creating wicked gossip. He certainly believed what he was saying, and he must have lived through it. It was only ten years ago that the order ruled here. What prompted the grand master to withdraw from Cyprus has never been greatly publicised. Perhaps I am beginning to see why.’

  ‘But surely no knight of the Temple would be so wicked?’ Arnau said, shocked.

  Ramon shrugged yet again. ‘Men are but men, Arnau, and few are saints. If all the members of our order were perfect, then there would be no need for a rule to keep them on the blessed path. Some of the lambs of God stray from the flock from time to time. I have heard tales of less than pious acts on occasion perpetrated by men of our order, though I have to admit this old man’s tale is a grand story of wickedness compared with others I have he
ard. I hope that his bile has driven him to exaggerate. Still, we will clearly not be welcome here and we should look to move on as soon as we can sail.’

  Arnau nodded his agreement. He had been looking forward to a sojourn on Cyprus, but now the prospect had been soured beyond all hope.

  * * *

  Over the following days and weeks Arnau, Ramon and Sebastian fell into a somewhat reclusive routine. They devoted the majority of their time to the traditional tasks of the monastery and to keeping to the liturgy of the hours. On occasion, the sour old caretaker would come over to perform some menial task. His demeanour was always polite, but hovered permanently on the edge of anger. The two knights spent more and more time with Sebastian learning the Greek tongue, attempting to achieve a level of fluency, with ever-increasing success. When they ventured out from the church, which was not often, and ever less so as winter began to make its presence truly felt, they did so in plain tunics and hose, lacking all the symbols of the order, yet retaining their swords against the possibility of violence.

  They did manage to make three friends, who together eased their time on the island. The first was Avra, the wife of their bitter caretaker. While old Stathis clearly saw the three travellers as the worst form of evil, it seemed that his wife was a more forgiving sort. She apologised for her husband’s manner and explained that the bulk of the islanders saw their present existence as being little more than vassals of a conquering Westerner, blaming that squarely on the lion-hearted English king, and upon the Order to whom King Richard had sold the island. Unlike Stathis, she did not blame these three men for the actions of others, and she brought them cakes and treats whenever she baked, which became a welcome addition to their plain fare.

  Their second semi-regular visitor who was sympathetic towards them was a girl of around seventeen called Olympia, who seemed more than a little enamoured with Sebastian. She could be relied upon with each visit to bring news of happenings on the island, though she seemed far more interested in hearing about Sebastian’s life than in relaying news.