The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  ‘This one,’ said Quint, punctuating what he said with loud slaps from the sole of his hand-held shoe as he battered the creature to death, ‘would have sent you into a dancing fit which would not have ended until you dropped dead from exhaustion.’

  ‘Or you,’ suggested Walt.

  ‘Or me.’

  Meanwhile the scabs on Walt’s cheeks had begun to suppurate and his jaw swelled on that side of his face so he looked like something a child might have scrawled on an inflated pig’s bladder, or overfilled wineskin. The pain was bad too especially when moving or attempting to eat.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  About four hours after noon on the third day they came to Dorylaeum which stood at the point where the road bifurcated.

  One branch headed south and east towards the ancient city of Iconium and thence to the ports on the south coast which connected with Cyprus, Palestine, and the Levant. Important trade route though this was, it was not to be compared with the other, which was no less than the western spur of the Golden Road to Samarkand and, beyond Samarkand, Cathay. Here the caravan split, many of the merchants being on their way to the other side of the world to buy spices and silks with gold, amber, garnets, pearls, and the sort of goods Theodora dealt in. However, on this occasion it was not to Samarkand she was bound but home to Sidé, having already, she said, sold on her lapis lazuli to a wholesale dealer in Nicomedia.

  As their caravan approached the town walls, which were substantial and made from dressed stone rather than brick, Walt and Quint espied a small group standing on a grassy knoll beneath an old and substantial ilex. As they grew nearer they paused, rubbed their eyes and, in Walt’s case, a cold sweat broke out on his palms and the back of his neck. There was no mistaking what they could see: a pack horse and a donkey, both well-laden, a small man, dark and melancholic in expression, a beautiful girl-child some fourteen years old and a boy of about twelve.

  ‘Ghosts,’ muttered Walt.

  ‘But they have shadows,’ Quint replied.

  They broke ranks from the caravan and crossed the small space that still separated them. Behind them Theodora’s voice was raised in scolding complaint but ignored. They slid to the ground from the backs of their mounts and Quint ran into the arms of Adeliza, Alain and Taillefer in turn. Walt hung back in something of a dither. His feelings of sudden euphoria when he realised who they were had surprised him -- he found it required quite an effort to convince himself he was sorry to see Taillefer alive. Once they had pulled back and allowed the possibility of ordinary speech, the magician shrugged, wrinkled his soft and squidgey nose and remarked laconically, ‘You see, I too rose on the third day.’

  ‘Liar,’ exclaimed Adeliza. ‘Daddy cannot resist a fib. He was off the cross by dawn and soon well on the mend.’

  Though not yet entirely recovered: his face was even greyer and sadder than before, with new lines etched in his forehead and cheeks; his hands were still bandaged, and when he walked he limped along with an arm on the shoulders of each of his children. That he really had been crucified was not in doubt; as to how he escaped and managed to reach Dorylaeum ahead of them remained secrets he would not divulge.

  The caravan now split, the smaller section heading south with a new conductor, a rotund swarthy Greek with a big moustache and a stubbled chin. He led them round the city walls to the caravansaray on the south side. Theodora and her new acquaintance took commodious rooms on the first floor, while Quint, Walt and the rest were told to make shift in the courtyard.

  ‘There are good fires there,’ she said, ‘and the nights are not yet cold.’ Which was not true -- the reason for the fires was precisely because, since they were now past the Autumn equinox and high up in the mountains, a deep chill settled over everything as soon as the sun set. However, with twenty or so other travellers huddled together around their particular fire, with leather wine bottles freely circulating and a reasonable abundance of wood, mostly aromatic pine, none suffered greatly from the cold. They dined off chicken pieces stuck on sticks or daggers and broiled in the flames and drank deeply from wineskins, Walt more than the others. The wine was drawn by the landlord through spigots from vast upright barrels. Since it was fully a year old it was very strong and very dry to the palate, but rich and dark.

  Almost immediately Quint and Taillefer fell into a deep theological discussion, or so it seemed to Walt, who already felt a little put out by the attention the ex-monk was giving the ex-jongleur. They seemed so ready to pick up from where they had left off after spending a night in similar discourse in the Nicaean jail that Walt found it difficult to resist making a wineskin holding two quarts his own personal companion. And anyway he was still not fully reconciled to the mountebank’s presence.

  ‘In the three days or so that I have known you,’ Quint remarked, wiping the nozzle of another skin on his sleeve and passing it on, ‘I have witnessed performances staged by you which appear to throw derision on the teachings of the church, indeed on very basic Christian doctrine. You have mocked the Unity-Trinity, the Annunciation, the passion of Christ and his Resurrection. I have to ask myself . . . why?’

  Taillefer, pausing between swallows, fixed him with his dark eyes. They glanced round the side of the almost empty skin which was tilted up next to his cheek, so in the flickering light it looked like a giant growth. There was suspicion there, even now, that Quint might be a spy for the thought-police.

  ‘I am interested, I must add,’ Quint continued hastily, ‘because I too find my faith stretched to limits by the many absurdities we are asked to give credence to. I have always felt that Tertullian’s assertion that he “believed since it was impossible” to be one of the more stupid of the many stupid pronouncements of the Holy Fathers.’

  Taillefer resumed swallowing and, when he was sure he had extracted all he could from the sack, lowered it and burped. No, belched. He passed it to his neighbour, a muleteer, short and fat, who reversed it and shook it before breaking into a stream of abuse in the Pamphylian dialect whose meaning was, however, obvious to all who heard him.

  Taillefer looked at him with an expression which was more than saintly in its sudden, wide-eyed, pious compassion.

  ‘My man,’ he said in tones of unctuous bonhomie, ‘go fill it at the well and you will find it has in it all you could reasonably desire.’

  After a moment’s hesitation the muleteer struggled to his feet and made off. Quint raised his eyebrows quizzically at Taillefer, who in turn pursed his lips and gave a slight shrug.

  The magician now wriggled himself closer to Quint (thus making Walt feel even more marginalized) and began to speak quickly, urgently, but very quietly.

  ‘On what,’ he asked, ‘are the tenets of our religion based? Or, put it another way, for what reasons does it appeal to so many people? One. In return for promises of everlasting life it asks only that you should believe that you yourself are chosen, are one of God’s elect. An easy act of faith for anyone with a sense of self-importance. If, however, you lack high self-esteem, it also promises everlasting life to the humble and meek. Or, look at it another way: on the one side it proposes a tolerably sensible and easily acceptable moral code based on the Ten Commandments reinforced by injunctions that we should love God and one another, too. But on the other side it says that no matter how good you are it matters not if you are not chosen . . .’

  ‘This, I must say, has become the sticking point for me,’ cried Quint. ‘Which is why, even when I was still a monk, I became a follower of Pelagius the Briton, and was indeed expelled from my order for championing his beliefs. Not to put too fine a point on it, was branded a heretic and was about to be handed over to the secular arm of the law when I escaped.’

  Side-tracked, Taillefer took him up on this with some enthusiasm.

  ‘A point the surprisingly learned judge picked up on at your trial. How does it go? “If I ought, I can.” But Pelagius went further than that. Or rather he accepted the implications inherent in that simple statement, namely
that man has a will, a free will to choose between good and evil unassisted by grace - ’

  ‘Yes, yes, YES,’ Quint rejoined with that special enthusiasm that is typically present when two men (‘men’? -- the word is used advisedly) with intellectual, or at any rate academic pretensions find themselves in agreement and urge their hobby-horses helter-skelter on towards a destination both can foresee, ‘and in this does he not rediscover for mankind the supreme dignity Aristotle the Stagirite proposed when he delineated the intellectual physiognomy of the Great Souled, the magnanimous man . . .’

  But at this moment the muleteer returned.

  ‘I did what you bloody said,’ he shouted, ‘and instead of getting what I wanted all I got was bloody water.’

  For a moment it was clear Taillefer might try to persuade the man that water was in fact all a man already drunk could reasonably desire but, receiving a warning look from Quint, instead found a coin or two in his purse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please replenish your bottle at my expense with whatever you want.’ The muleteer held the coins to the light from the fire and wandered off back to the inn-keeper and his hogsheads.

  Taillefer shrugged.

  ‘Some you win,’ he said, ‘some you lose.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Quint, reminded of how the conversation had started by Taillefer’s failure to convince a muleteer that the water he drew from the well was wine, ‘but I should like to return to the starting point of this discussion. Why do you play these mocking tricks that seem to ape the miracles . . .?’

  ‘I was coming to that. The god in Jesus was, for many, manifested in the miracles he performed. What I aim to do is show that these were not beyond the power of any mortal who has trained himself in the right techniques of illusion and persuasion - ’

  ‘You aim then to prove Christ a mountebank?’

  ‘Exactly. The Mountebank of mountebanks but ... a mountebank.’

  This was enough for Walt. He was in no way devout, kept his religion well compartmentalized to certain seasons like Christmas and Easter, and a daily moment or two when rising or going to bed. Nevertheless, this was too much, especially when as he rose, muttering something about needing a leak, he heard Quint reciting doggerel verse which Taillefer joined in with . . .’

  If you don't think I'm divine

  You’ll have to pay when I make wine

  And bear in mind, as I think you ought to,

  It’s a whole lot easier turning wine to water.

  Taillefer now stood, and wavering about somewhat, with a new wine skin in his left hand, first held up a still-bandaged palm then began to chant solo in a quiet, happy, foolish voice:

  I’ve done some harm. I've done some good

  I’ve done a whole lot better than they thought I would

  To make quite sure you’ll believe in me

  I’ve let them nail me to a tree.

  Fortunately, since he continued to use his own mongrel mixture of Norman French and English, none but his immediate companions could understand him. Nevertheless, Walt felt much of his old antagonism to the charlatan returning.

  He moved away, staggering a little himself, wondering if there was a proper urinal or did one just turn wine back to water against the nearest wall? He was very drunk. Had, in fact, had a skinful. Apart from anything else, he found that when he was drunk the pain in his mouth receded, became bearable.

  He looked up and around him and his blurred vision fell on a casement dimly lit by one candle. Framed within the narrow space a woman in a white-pleated gown took off a full wig of red hair and shook out black locks that had been pinned up beneath it. So what, Walt thought. Women were deceivers ever. Yet, in some corner of his brain he knew he had seen something somewhere that was significant, important, a warning. It carried a name -- Jezebel perhaps? But that he knew was not quite right.

  He tripped over a somnolent body on the floor and apologised even as he stumbled against a stable door which opened and let him through though he did not actually fall over. A tethered ass shuffled and resumed its crunchy chewing on the grain it had been given, and a drover between it and the wall looked up over his shoulder from the serving girl he was rogering and swore at him. Walt staggered out again, blundered into the next stable where a mule was already pissing, like a horse, so Walt felt there’d be no harm if he did likewise and did so after the usual one-handed awkwardness involved in getting the thing out. The lengthy stream caught a gleam of firelight and, as it faded, Walt for a moment caressed himself between thumb and forefinger, easing the foreskin back and forth. It’s been a long time, he thought. And then he remembered Adeliza dancing in her shift.

  Outside again and looking upwards the stars wheeled round a still point above his head, and smoke from the dying fire drifted across them, a glaucous yeast upon the rich, plum darkness of the sky, heaven’s roof- tree hung with purple fruit. Slowly spinning like a wandering planet torn from its sphere, Walt wove his way through bodies that slept like petrified waves or whales upon a heaving ocean and sank at last into a space between Alain and Adeliza.

  Taillefer and Quint, improvising alternate lines, sang on using the plainchant for the Veni Creator - not an easy fit but somehow they shoehorned it in:

  Though one in three, I’m not the third,

  My mother’s a virgin, my daddy’s a bird

  What’s bred in the bone will help me to fly

  So I’m off now dear friends to my place in the sky.

  Adeliza reached out her long brown fingers and took Walt s right wrist, and presently began to caress the knobbled stub -- which was nice of her. He slept and dreamt, but boozily and still much bothered with the pain in his cheek and shattered teeth.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bravely from the bank he dived, the seething waves received him. Dawn to day to night to dawn fled by before his feet touched bottom. For fifty years, depth, length and breadth, the monster-she had held this lake inviolate from human trespass -- now fiercely vengeful, ravenous for Mood, she smelt the man who dared her lair. Her loathsome nails slashed out but linked rings of mail saved him, nor could her fingers prise open his armour.

  Grasping him greedily she swept down through the deeps where the sea creatures struck at him, tusks bored at his corselet, monsters molested him.

  Lured by a flame that was lurid she dragged him through waterless vaults to a hall hung with weapons and treasure. The flame flickered brightly revealing her visage, fearsome, infernal, a face straight from hell. No water impeded the blade that he whirled, arm’s strength swung the ring-hilted sword so it sang a war song. Yet the edge failed him, sheared though it had through many a helm and split open the mail of many an ill-fated man -- her flesh it was turned by, her bone-chamber broke it. In anger he hurled it, its hilt wound with ringed serpents, heeded no more its damascened steel -- his own strength he trusted, the might of his hand, risking his life for long-lasting fame. Her shoulders he grappled in mortal embrace nor mourned he their feud as groundwards in fury he flung her. Lithely she twisted and locked him in clinches, tricksily tripped so he stumbled and fell. Knife-naked and gleaming, she threw herself on him, avenging her son, her only offspring. But the ring mail denied both the thrust and the slash.

  Broke free and back on his feet, he spied on the wall a sword wrought by giants, a warrior’s joy, massive and matchless, huge as it was, no man but he could handle it hopefully. Savage the blow he swung at her neck-bone, head severed, her body crashed to the ground. Her blood smoked on the blade and melted it utterly, leaving only the gold of its hilt -- so hot was the blood, so poisonous the monster who died in the cave. He who had lived through the onslaught of enemies held jewelled hilt and hewn head and swam up through the water. Purged of impurity by the death of the she- beast, the lake stained with battle-blood at last became calm, and under the clouds the anger abated . . .

  And Walt, sweating through ejaculated like a whale, pumping semen over his stomach, till at last the sword of his prick floppe
d too. The pungent odour swam up through the covers, filled his nostrils and Adeliza’s too so she murmured and sighed in her sleep and turned her face into his shoulder. Two years is a long time.

  ‘Your young friend, Walt,’ Taillefer was saying. ‘I bet he’s a good fuck. I shouldn’t like him to take advantage of Adeliza beneath that blanket.’

  ‘Not likely. He’s a mess. Traumatized-’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Word I made up. From the Germanic word for ‘wound’ -- applied here to wounds in the mind. Even before the battle where he lost all faith himself as well as his hand I doubt he was up to much. He fears the female orgasm, the claws that scratch, the teeth that bite. Anglo-Saxon, you see. Attitudes. Attitudes to the female sex. See the conquering hero comes - ’

  They were both still coherent, speech unslurred, but slow, as if they were speaking and living in a different sphere where time passed more slowly.

  ‘I think I understand,’ Taillefer took up the tale. ‘Sound the trumpets, beat the drums! The war-parties in their long-boats. No women with them. The curved prows, the dragons’ heads, kill the men, and rape the women. Then settle down. But for ever after the women are alien, a separate race--’

  ‘In smokey byres they spin and weave,’ Quint chimed in, ‘cast spells, make magic, bleed from their cunts, strangle the first-born with the birth cord and for ever plot their dire revenge. Well, it’s understandable. Sins of the fathers, unto the third generation - ’

  ‘Oh much more than that. Unless the circles broken - ’

  ‘Circle?’

  ‘Manner of speaking. Unless the chain is snapped.’

  Quint nodded approval, preferring the revised metaphor. He spun it along.