Inside the Pale but close to it, on the southern side, is a larger fortress called Guisnes, which lies across the road that links Calais with Paris.
The walls of Calais itself are, we have been told and, no doubt, shortly we shall be able to verify this, substantial and castle-like. Inside are the streets and a keep; and finally there is the harbour itself, two basins one within the other, enclosed and protected by moles from both storms and seaborne incursions.
This whole area is held by the Ingerlonders and indeed is considered by them to be a part of Ingerlond, but is at this time contested by two different factions of Ingerlonders who are at enmity with each other. The first faction has as its base the fortress of Guisnes, built to counter incursions from the Franks, whose king claims Calais. However, the Franks are more occupied at the moment with the Burgundians than the Ingerlonders and are therefore not a threat to Calais. So, this first faction can use Guisnes as a base from which they can mount attacks on the second faction, which holds the town and port of Calais.
This first faction is led by the Duke of Somerset. He is a cousin of the King of Ingerlond. The King of Ingerlond's wife. Queen Margaret, sent him to Calais to wrest it from the Captain of Calais, who is the Earl of Warwick. An earl is a noble of high degree but not as high as a duke. Dukes must have royal blood, I think. The Earl of Warwick is a friend and supporter of the Duke of York, who is also a cousin of the King, but an enemy of the Queen. Somerset has good reason for hating Warwick, who killed Somerset's father in a battle some four years ago. I know this is all very confusing, and I confess I am not confident that I have understood it all myself. Perhaps it will become clearer as time goes on.
Guisnes is some way from the sea and we have to cross the sea to get to Ingerlond. The only harbour from which it is safe to arrive in Ingerlond is the harbour of Calais. Either we must get into Calais, which the Duke of Somerset and his army have been trying to do without success for some months, or go back to a Frankish port to the south-west such as Boulogne or Dieppe and this we cannot really do because it is now dangerous for us to go back into Francia. When we were in Francia we promised the Frank king we would have nothing to do with the Ingerlonders who are his enemies. And, anyway, the Ingerlonder ports are closed to ships from Francia. So, you see. We do have problems.
They are not helped by what the people here call 'the weather". It is not easy to explain what weather is to someone who has not experienced it. I will try. though, since I fancy it is going to play a considerable part in our lives in the months to come. Apparently the "weather" is even worse in Ingerlond than Francia. Let me start with rain.
Here it may rain at any time of day or night, for hours or only minutes at a time, as heavily as it does at home or very lightly in what they call a 'drizzle'. And, believe it or not, this changeability is a feature throughout the year. Which leads me to consider the year as such and the seasons, two of which we have already experienced – autumn and winter. But no. This will be altogether too confusing. Let me stay with weather. I'll return to the seasons later, apart from saying that this is the cold season, which is not surprising as the nights are twice as long as the days, while in six months' time it will be the other way round and the season will be summer. I suppose that just as the weather is now unbearably cold, compared with our temperate clime, it will become unbearably hot in the summer. But just now, as I have said, the days are short, gloomy and cold.
So much for rain. Now, wind. Wind is as variable as rain. It can blow from any direction at all, at any time of the day or night, or there can be no wind at all. It may be barely more than a breath or it may be a gale, but even when it is a gale-it comes in bursts and gusts, not continuous twisting blasts of wind such as occasionally fall upon the eastern coasts of our own country.
Although at this time of year the weather is generally cold, it may vary from intolerably cold, so that the water turns solid, to fairly cold so that the water that was solid in the morning is wet again by midday. We have had some snow. You remember about snow? Travellers from the mountains to the far north of our part of the world have told us about snow, and Ali ben Quatar Mayeen warned us that it might be encountered. Well, we have had some snow, but so far, like the hard water or 'ice', it has melted away to water before midday, leaving even where muddy and dirty.
But what I must emphasise above all else is the unpredictability of all this. It is hardly ever the same weather two days running. The only thing you can say about it is that it is almost always, one way or another, uncomfortable. And cold.
I can't tell you how messy it all is. I am writing at a desk in front of a tiny window in a tower overlooking the land that stretches between here and the town twenty miles away. The desk is rough-hewn to the extent that the quill I am using, as you see, splatters and bumps over the ridges beneath. The stone walls are undressed too and irregular, the stones just piled on each other with mortar slopped between them. The window is glazed with tiny pieces of glass, none the same as any of the others, held together by strips of lead. The glass is translucent, just, but not fully transparent. It is cloudy and it distorts the view. My desk is lit by a candle, although it is midday, made from animal fat, mutton from the smell of it, and it smokes. There is a small fire of smouldering logs in a large fireplace. All the heat goes up the chimney. There are hangings on the walls, with hunting scenes crudely stitched into them, spoiled by the grubs of moths that live in the interstices.
Opening the window, which I have to do if I want enough light to go on writing, I look out over sodden fields, fanned in strips, copses of leafless, dead-looking trees, a road that angles round the holdings of the peasants towards the distant town, which is a smudge of smoke on the horizon. The road is not a real road but a narrow strip of mud and puddles, the mud a pale brown except where the rock shows through, not really rock but a softish, powdery, white material at present slimy with rain.
There is no living thing in sight at present but there are a couple of dead ones: on a rise near the road there is a gallows where two bodies, hanged by the neck, slowly twist. Earlier a bird, big and black with a heavy grey beak, pecked and tore at their faces, but even it has now gone. The poor souls were accused of spying on behalf of those Ingerlonders who hold Calais under the Earl of Warwick.
You know what it is, cousin, about this place? I'll tell you. It feels unfinished, half made, as if Parvati, the Creatorix. has been called away to more pressing business only shortly after she has started. Or put it this way. Parvati, having Started the act of creation on the banks of one of our sacred rivers and brought what she created to an early completion and perfection, moved out in a series of concentric circles, and, after many hundreds, indeed thousands, of years has only just begun her work here.
Enough for now. I have just been called to the council chamber of this Duke of Somerset.
I'm back now from the council chamber. This young Duke of Somerset – he's not more than twenty-live – is a proud man and kept us waiting as other supplicants appeared in front of where he sat, like a king, on a throne. When it was our turn, he expected us to make a deep bow when we were first ushered out to stand in front of him. I must confess I am disappointed. I had expected that the nobility at any rate would have manners, a sense of what is fitting. He knows who I am. He knows that I am cousin to an emperor, lie has no cause to give himself airs. As far as I can gather he is as much besieged in this squalid little castle as those in Calais are besieged by him. He has only a thousand men here with him though he says he daily expects reinforcements as soon as the weather is good enough to allow them to land on the beaches.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ali has managed things well, as he always does. In return for several pounds' weight each of ginger, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom and cloves, this duke is going to give us a sale-conduct to the gates of Calais, but only if we give an undertaking not to cross the Channel and visit Ingerlond. Instead we have agreed, once we have access to the port, to take a boat up the coast to a Germa
nic city called Bremen and trade there. Apparently it is an important member of the Hanse. A League. which is a cartel of merchants who rule the ports along the mainland coasts from Bruges to Muscovy and control almost all the trade in the area except that of Ingerlond. Since we have no intention of going there, this is all by the way – Bremen is just Ali's excuse to get us into Ingerlond. I'll let you know how this works out as soon as the situation is clear.
Meanwhile, a quick word about Ali. He really has turned out rather well, for all he remains, in appearance anyway, as uncouth as ever. His mastery of languages is astonishing: he has been able to communicate with the locals in every country we have passed through. This should be no surprise since it is what he promised us, but I confess to being more impressed than I had expected to be. But he has also shown great acumen in dealing with people, getting things organised, trading off the goods we have brought, in what seem to me to be profitable bargains. Like the rest of us he now goes about in furs, in his case a long, shaggy coat, rather mangy and shabby. Shiva knows what sort of animal it came from. Underneath he keeps his old cape with the hole in it for his head, his turban and his loincloth. Yet, as ever, he manages to carry himself with a sort of reserved dignity that usually commands respect.
Anish, too, is turning out well enough, though he suffers from the cold more than most of us… A knock at my door. I'll finish this off when I have seen whoever is calling.
Well, it was Anish and Ali, with bad news. Our soldiers are to be sent home. Apparently the healthy darkness of their skins together with arms and accoutrements that appear strange and even devilish to these superstitious people have attracted hostility and, I would guess, envy. In short, Somerset refuses to let them go on with us. Ali thinks Somerset is afraid they will join Warwick and be used against him and that their magical powers may prove decisive. So. We will press on without them. Ali says we should have no difficulty in recruiting hired bodyguards whenever we think we need them. This reduces our little troupe to some ten or so including a Buddhist monk, who has hung around us since we left, and a fakir, who no longer amuses us – we have seen his tricks too often. However, he usually gets a crowd of the gullible in the villages and marketplaces we pass through who give him food and small change, which he shares with our Buddhist.
That really is all for now. The light is fading, this candle is burning low and stinking more than ever.
Our soldiers can take this with them. I almost envy them, despite the long haul they have ahead.
I remain, dear cousin,
Your devoted servant, Harihara
Chapter Fourteen
Dear Cousin
At least we are warmer, our accommodation is almost adequate, and the company merrier, though in a rough, buffoonish way. But, first, the last twenty miles that got us here. The roads we took was never less than ankle deep in mud.
Well, here we arc in Calais, in the castle or keep, and things are a little better than they were before. And often knee-deep. This Duke of Somerset stole our saddle horses – he called it requisitioning – leaving us only the pack animals, which in effect he confiscated as well but then, on Ali's insistence, agreed to sell them back to us. So, although we had to walk we were able at least to take with us the few precious commodities we still had left for trade and barter.
The rain continued to fall, blowing across the bleak plain like curtains of icy grey silk which yet, perhaps on account of the fineness ot the drops, seemed to penetrate our clothes or at any rate seek out the gaps between them and our skin. Our feet squelched in the yellowish-white clay, which contrived to be both sticky and greasy at the same time – that is, it stuck like overcooked unwashed rice to our footwear, yet when impacted presented a surface on which one slid and tumbled. Some of the small rivers we crossed had precarious plank bridges, just wide enough to take a narrow agricultural cart, but three of the lesser ones had no bridges and we had to wade through them, dragging our reluctant asses and mules behind us.
The fields were ploughed but not yet harrowed and water lay in runnels like strips of polished lead in the furrows. When, or if, the land dries out, the soil will be broken up and planted with seed which, in eight months' time, will carry grain, which they call rye and which they will grind for the flour to make the bread that is the staple diet of the ordinary people. We have already had our fill of it. It is heavy, grey, stodgy, sour stuff, which has caused most of us to be severely constipated. However, here in Calais the nobility eat a white bread made from wheat, which is almost palatable.
The leafless trees looked dead though some we were told, those planted in regular lines, were fruit trees and would bear fruit when summer, the warm season, comes. They keep these fruits in the roofs of their barns, wrapped in straw. We have eaten some. They are called apples. The skin is dry wrinkled and coarse, the white flesh squashy yet dry too. They are a pale brown but, we are told, when fresh they were a yellowish green and so delicious that they call them golden. According to Ali, the apples grown in Ingerlond are better.
There is meat available – beef, which of course we will not touch, pork, which Ali refuses, mutton and domestic fowls – though little is eaten by the common people. Almost all the animals and poultry they rear are taken into the city and sold so they can pay rent and taxes to the landowners, who are Ingerlonder gentry. They either boil it in pots or broil it over open fires. In neither case do they try to improve the flavour apart from smearing it with salt before cooking. It is thus either tasteless or disgusting. They drink milk, but straight from the cow without allowing it to mature or ferment so it is bland, ale, which is a sour strong liquor made from grain that has been allowed to germinate and rot, and wine, also very tart so it seems to take the skin off the inside of one's mouth. They do not drink water, which they say carries disease. Consequently the Ingerlonders are drunk by the end of every meal, including breakfast.
Although it was only twenty miles, this last stage of our journey took two days – partly on account of the shortness of the days but mainly because of the state of the road. We spent the night in a fortified tavern with a courtyard in the middle, stabling on three sides of the ground floor, a communal room on the other, and dormitories above. There was nothing in the way of hygiene. Travellers, male and female, were expected to piss and shit on the edges of a great pile of steaming muck in the middle of the courtyard – a mountain of human ordure and the sweepings from the stables. There were no washing facilities. Apart from those provided by the incessant rain.
This inn marked the border between the land controlled by Warwick, which we were entering, and that of Somerset, which we were leaving. We had been accompanied by a small troop of Somerset's soldiers who stayed at the inn, relieving their comrades who returned on the next day to Guisnes. At the inn there were soldiers in the service of Warwick. We expected them to fight, but though they were well armed they saw no reason to do so, which was the first mark of good sense I have seen amongst these people. They carried swords, bows and arrows, and wore rimmed helmets over chain-mail cowls, and jerkins. They did not carry shields, as these, they said, would interfere with their handling of the bows. Shields, they said, were for the gentry. I allowed them to see the keen interest I felt in their bows and they were kind enough to demonstrate them.
They are fearsome weapons. Each bow is a simple branch, shaped and seasoned, nearly six feet long. The arrows are a yard long and tipped with a slim but barbed steel point. Each soldier normally carries ten or a dozen at a time. They can shoot further than almost any crossbow and pierce armour up to half an inch thick at a hundred yards. But, in contrast to crossbows, they have one enormous disadvantage: they require huge strength on the part of the bowman to be of any real use. Most men in Ingerlond apparently begin training with a smaller version at an early age, and are required by their lords to keep up the practice into late manhood. The result is that you can tell an Ingerlonder, not one of the gentry but the ordinary countryfolk, by the swollen, overmuscled nature of his shoulders an
d arms, especially the right one, which pulls the feather flight of the arrow right back to his ear.
Although these two troops of bowmen were serving opposed masters they expressed no enmity or even dislike for each other through most of the evening, but ate and drank together in perfect amity. Until, that is, they got into a game of dice whereat a quarrel broke out with one man accusing another of cheating. By now, of course, all were drunk. The quarrel became a fight, but not with real weaponry, just fists, table-legs, chairs and so forth. The public rooms were wrecked, many heads were bloodied, and two or three were rendered unconscious. Then suddenly all fell back into friendliness again for no apparent reason, and they continued drinking ale together until all had fallen into a stupor as if nothing untoward had happened at all.
We woke to an almost cloudless dawn and a piercing cold wind that blew out of the eye of the rising sun. For a moment it was all almost beautiful: the sky above sapphire, then, in the east, rose-pink like the tips of lotus petals or wild roses; the ground, the broken furrows, the trees and their branches and twigs were all covered in a dust like diamonds that glittered in the sun. Almost for a moment I believed the verses my brother Jehani had copied out, describing a jewelled city. This dust was a little like snow but finer and is called frost. It is made from the tiny particles of moisture in the air that freeze then fall and collect on everything they land on.
Kings of Albion Page 10