by K. T. Tomb
The dove had disappeared while the troops had gathered about Jacob’s Well. Saladin’s soldiers advised them all to pray and then cast a stone on a small pile of rocks near Jacob’s Well, out of respect for Jacob’s own faith in God, and as a token, perhaps even a key, into the heart of Ararat, to the Holy Grail itself.
As the men gathered together their gear to continue, the dove appeared again, and Richard knew that the dove was from God, but he was apprehensive, for in his dream, he was not on a mountain, but in a dark passageway.
Richard did not know what was to become of his and Saladin’s men. He did know that his feet were hurting. He did not have the callouses of the common man upon his feet. He had soft feet and they were not happy with being on foot.
As evening fell, the group found themselves high up Mount Ararat, but the peak itself loomed still higher. It had been but a day’s climb, and Saladin’s warriors advised that it was rumored to be a three-day climb up Ararat and to the Holy Grail.
“Must we reach the peak?” asked one of Richard’s Templars.
His answer: “The Holy Grail is not at the peak, but near a deep valley. That is all I know.”
The troops stopped and made camp on a relatively flat plain on the side of the mountain of pain. Great cold gusts of wind came at this time, making even the strongest of them whimper with discomfort. It was like knives hitting their faces, and Saladin’s men pulled their wool burnooses over their faces. Richard and his men had no such protection from the onslaught of the biting wind.
As Richard sat before a big fire built from wood that should not have been there, as they were far above the treeline —another sign, perhaps —he and his men huddled on one side and Saladin and his men on the other. Richard wondered again about the true meaning of this expedition. The Muslims, too, believed in the Holy Grail, and the story of the Ark of the Covenant, a chest containing religious artifacts, was within the pages of their Qur’an, their holy book. As well, Jesus was mentioned in their holy book many times. It does not prove that my religion is better than theirs if we find the Holy Grail, it will simply prove that we are both right.
Richard found comfort in the thought as he drifted to sleep with his blistered feet, thousands of feet up the great Ararat.
Chapter Eight
In the morning, the dove was gone and Richard was at a loss for what to do next. Silently, he was angry at God for leading them all this way and then deserting him, but once again, he consulted with the dying Saladin and found courage in the old man’s wisdom. In a breathy voice, the older man said: “Allah, whom you call God, is always with us. I can see his sign in all that we do. Be receptive, Richard, do not be blind to the nature of His ways. Sometimes, signs and portents are subtle.”
“It is the same God that we both worship,” Richard said.
“I hope that you are correct,” Saladin said weakly. “It is the only thing that makes sense of all this.”
A day passed upon this campsite. Richard did not dare venture out upon the mountain without the guidance of God, for on this day, snow began to fall, and Richard knew the snow would cover the many fissures and cracks upon Ararat; this snowfall would become a deadly trap for those walking over them. The baying of wolves could be heard, and twice, they came across the tracks of the great bears of the mountains. One of his men had even spotted, lower upon the mountain, the stiff remains of a colorful snake, which they had been warned by the villagers to avoid, due to the instantaneous death that would result from the snake’s poison.
Night came and with it, not only a deadly chill, but deadly news. And loss.
Two of Richard’s men had ventured lower on the mountain to gather fuel for the fire; only one returned to tell their harrowing story.
“Gabriel slipped off the edge of a cliff, only to disappear in the foggy mist that hovered within a seemingly bottomless gorge. I almost fell myself. It was a simple task of gathering firewood and Gabriel had been whistling a song. I was playing, too, at echoes of my singing. We peeked out on the edge of the cliff and made our way around a huge mound. A great rumbling was suddenly heard, and looking up, we saw great packs of ice flowing down the side of the mountains. Gabriel was the first to make it around the mound, and thus, was exposed to the avalanche. He was struck with great force and hurled many, many feet in the air, screaming, only to fall along with the snow and ice over the side of the cliff. I was sheltered by the huge mound, a snow-covered boulder the size of a small home, and was struck by the ice, but not enough to cause me to lose my balance.” Indeed, his face was lacerated and bruised.
The Templars and Muslims had been warned by those in the village not to not make undue noise upon the mountain of pain, as sometimes, only a cough or sneeze could cause the precariously placed ice and snow to lose its hold.
“Apparently, you two missed the translation of the villagers’ warnings. There is to be no singing. No whistling. No shouting. This mountain should not even know we are here,” Richard said. He had to turn away his grieving face that he had lost two more men, Templars at that. It was a travesty.
Suffice it to say, there was little fuel for this particularly cold night, as the snow had come just that day. Above them, perhaps two thousand more feet, there was perpetual snow covering the mountain—a glacier. But halfway up the mountain, at the point where the small group now camped, snow and hail fell with blind white fury. Where the sun was shining one moment, clouds would gather in the next, bringing with them a furious storm.
It was enough to make them all miserable, and some became sick. They did not have the proper clothing for the extreme cold and they stifled their coughs as much as possible, to avoid dislodging any ice and snow slides above them. The cold did not help Saladin, and now, he seemed to be almost at the point of death. Indeed, his feet were blue. It looked as if Saladin was not long for this world.
Richard did not know what to feel. On the one hand, he welcomed the death of Europe’s greatest foe, but on the other, he knew he was on a mission to redeem his soul in the eyes of God. Richard respected the irony of the situation: on the one hand he had killed, some would say murdered, twenty thousand of Saladin’s own; but on the other hand, he was on a deadly quest to save the man himself. It was a fitting punishment for the King of England, he realized.
Since coming to Asia Minor, Richard had also come to doubt his own religion, seeing for the first time in his life those who would kill and die for their own Muslim religion, a religion vastly different than Richard’s own. The King of England was not a man set in his ways, and though he was King of England, he did not always insist that his ways were superior; and, most of all, he was not stubborn and egotistical like other kings he knew. He had listened attentively to the sage advice of the Master of the Order of the Knights Templar himself, Robert de Sable. Perhaps that was why he had had such success thus far in the Crusades, capturing Cyprus, Acre and Ascalon.
The Templar Knights Master, de Sable, had accompanied Richard to the Holy Land as a councilor of war. And Richard had listened attentively and usually acted on the advice of either de Sable or his other high-ranking Templars, who acted together as a sort of war council. Therefore, Richard was indeed receptive to the thought that maybe they were not just and right in the Crusades, and that maybe Saladin and his men were just as right themselves, or maybe even more so.
Of course, Richard would let no one hear such thoughts except for Gustave, his personal priest, who was now headed to Jerusalem, by his own decision having lost a chance to see the Holy Grail himself, but determined to make some sort of pilgrimage to be able to tell the Pope that he had done something unique. In Richard’s last conversation with him, it did not matter to Gustave that there was plague in Jerusalem or that he might be persecuted, for he was convinced that it would make his journey even more interesting. Jerusalem was the holiest of holy cities and he felt that fact would protect him, a holy man, from succumbing to plague or persecution. Perhaps if Richard made it back there alive, he could tell Gustave all
he had learned and seen and felt. And then Gustave would share his experiences. He longed for his friend.
As it stood, Richard was months away from Jerusalem, and from its plague. He knew that God did not want him to go there, so as much as he longed to see the city, even if he didn’t fight for it, he obeyed God’s command.
And with my punishment on Ararat, Richard thought, staring into what was left of the fire, will come the confirmation of my religion. And with my confirmation will come the Muslim confirmation, too, for they, too, believe in the Holy Grail story. Who is right? Is their Allah really the same as my God? Is there room for two religions? Ten religions? A hundred?
The wind suddenly picked up, blowing fiercely, harder than Richard had ever felt wind blow before. It was trying, seemingly, to uproot the camp from their moorings upon the side of the great mountain. After many long minutes, the wind subsided. Richard, panicked and with his heart thumping in his chest, eased his grip on the provisions and blankets surrounding him.
His mind turned back to his personal problem. His spiritual problem. What will it prove to me if I do see the Holy Grail? That God is real? Do I doubt that God is real? No. I have seen His very explicit signs the last few days, perhaps my faith in Him, is even stronger now than ever, especially after my dream. Can one have faith in God but still doubt his religion? Richard knew that this was the true heart of his problem—he had often wrestled with the conceptual differences between faith and religion.
And then, Richard realized, as the pressure of sleep came over him, that he could not know how the finding of the Holy Grail would affect him and his faith until the Holy Grail was actually found. He advised himself to wait and see before making rash decisions.
Richard missed the company of Gustave, his friend and confidant, and he wondered if they would ever meet again. He grew weary of talking to himself in his head. He should not have let Gustave beg off on this trip to Ararat.
He needed his friend, more than ever.
Chapter Nine
In the morning, upon breaking their fast with long, hard loaves of bread, a specialty baked by the simple folks at the base of the mountain, the sign that Richard had been waiting for finally appeared.
The clouds still clustered thickly in a roiling gray mass, except for a short break in their density. Here, the sunlight came pouring out, seemingly funneled out, compressed into a knife-sharp beam of light that seemed to point. And this beam of light shone above them, landing somewhere on the side of the mountain.
Richard, excited, told his men and Saladin’s to gather their things and prepare to break camp and move out. The others, upon seeing the light, chattered among themselves, and Richard knew his men had rarely seen the glory of God revealed in such breathtaking splendor. Nor had he.
Richard was anxious to get moving, but forced himself to calm down as the others dawdled and collected their things. At last, they gathered the aged Saladin on his litter and covered him with as many garments as they could spare, cloaks taken from dead soldiers and piled upon the dying leader, who gasped in the frigid air under the weight of the cloaks. He was that weak that it was a major decision whether to expose him to cold or to make him bear the weight of many cloaks.
Though the dark gray clouds roiled in among them, like a boiling beef stew in an iron cauldron, the shaft of light that pointed to a certain spot never wavered. Richard’s heart beat wildly in his chest. Something miraculous was happening, and he smiled with a joy that he had never before felt. The very hand of God was shining that light for them to tell them where to go and he knew it.
Still, deep inside, he was a little nervous. Rarely, he knew, had anyone on the face of the Earth witnessed such overt miracles. This made him nervous, seeing the supernatural, firsthand. It was one thing to read it in a holy book, or to hear stories of such wonders from priests and pilgrims, but it was quite another altogether to be in the middle of such things and the intended recipient of…the Holy Grail. It was God’s promise and he let himself think of it over and over as he struggled up the slopes.
King Richard the Lionheart wanted to find wherever the beam of light ended because there above them, wherever the beam of light from the sky met the ground, would lay the Holy Grail.
After a time, he gathered his composure, and, indeed, he gave it much thought that God was drawing them higher and higher on the mountain to reap the reward of this entire Crusade, and do it in cooperation with the enemy.
His excitement would crest when he had the Grail in his hands. In England’s hands. Oh, what a triumph that would be, to bring home the Holy Grail from the Crusades. It would change history and no one, not even his brother, would dare try to wrest his kingdom from him.
Chapter Ten
The climb was treacherous and painful. The snow drove like needles into his skin, and his feet, like everyone else’s, turned blue in the agonizing cold. After climbing another thousand feet, with the huge sheets of glacial ice still another thousand or so feet above their heads, the beam of light focused more brightly on a barren rock face. Richard and his men pulled closer to the dark rocky face of the mountain, the wind once again picking up as they neared the place where the beam showed them the way.
Because of his growing excitement, the last one thousand feet almost made him forget the brutal harshness that the mountain could quickly inflict. The whip-like wind was a quick reminder, but he was not dissuaded from completing the journey.
As he approached the point of light, Richard couldn’t mask his disappointment when the beam just seemed to fall on a solid rock wall. They had no picks or shovels. Tears came to his eyes. He had been so sure that this would be the location of the legendary Holy Grail. But it was a wall.
Legendary Holy Grail? That last thought went through his head again. Do you not believe the Holy Grail exists? asked Richard. Of course I do.
Richard rubbed his teary eyes, squinting them against the wind. He gazed upon the barren rock cliff and began to question how the Holy Grail could be so high up a mountain. Who had put it here? God? Man? Angel?
And then he laughed inwardly, knowing the result of loud noise could bring slides of deadly ice and rocks crashing down on his head.
Of course, I believe the Holy Grail is here, somewhere. Why shouldn’t I? A God who could bring together two such bitter enemies on a quest for a Holy Grail without having us slit each other’s throats was surely the same God who could and would place the Holy Grail in the most inconvenient place on earth. Just to teach us something valuable.
Gustave understood Richard’s somewhat wicked sense of humor. He certainly needed him right now and was somewhat perturbed that his friend the priest seemed to have abandoned him for a jaunt into a famous holy, plague-driven city, just so he could make points with the Pope. Perhaps he had aspirations of becoming a bishop or cardinal. It began to dawn on Richard why his friend had taken his leave of Richard’s holy expedition to Ararat. Jerusalem was a popular destination with pilgrims and discussed in papal decrees. Mount Ararat? It was a rock in the middle of nowhere.
Let’s get to the heart of the problem, he told himself. You’re just bitter and angry because you thought you’d be gazing upon the Holy Grail by this time, and you aren’t, and so what’s the first thing you resort to doing?
“Doubting like a Thomas,” he chided himself aloud.
The soft tread of de Mandeville’s stride came close. “Do not doubt now, Richard. Things aren’t over yet,” he said in a way that was more familiar than formal.
“You’re right. We have a long way to go before it is over.”
Richard strode through his milling warriors, who had lost their way. Something was wrong, and then he realized what it was: the beam had winked out, leaving the morning in hazy gray shadows. But he refused to let his good spirits wink out as well. He walked over to the spot upon the rock wall where the light had shone. Three of his men went with him, including de Mandeville, who scratched notes on a scrap of parchment.
“What are you do
ing?” Richard asked the map maker.
“Making sure we know the way back, Your Majesty.”
Richard nodded. “Good idea. Carry on.”
Now, all were quiet, waiting for Richard to make the next move. Already the King could see Saladin’s warriors whispering among themselves. As well, Richard sensed a restlessness among his own men. All had traveled long and hard over empty desert and finally, up the bitter cold and treacherous mountain. Their patience was wearing thin. As was his. He knew it was a lot to ask of all these men, especially Saladin’s men, to believe that the miraculous cup of Christ would be here.
He kept visualizing it, almost as if trying to manifest its presence.
Richard found himself scanning the rock face for anything that did not look solid. And then, he saw it. A dark shadow. With the sun shining over his shoulder, almost directly upon the face of the cliff, there was little shadow indeed, except for a glimpse of black shadow surrounding the bottom edge of a huge boulder that was seemingly sitting before the cliff like something misplaced. To Richard, the shadow looked more like an opening into the cliff.
“A cave!” he said and pointed. His great lion’s heart soared with fervent hope.
“Keen eye, Majesty,” said one of the Templars.
Richard smiled at him. “We shall see how far inside the mountain this goes.”
“There may be danger. Shall I walk point, Majesty?” asked a warrior whose name he did not know.
“Nay, I shall be the first to lay my eyes on the Holy Grail.”
The man backed off and gave leave of the path to Richard.
Richard walked over to the mysterious shadow. It was really quite unnoticeable. But if one looked closely, he would see that the shadow did not line up with the angle of the sun. Indeed, there was plenty of shadow on the bottom right of the big boulder, cast by the sun and onto the rocky ridge that had led them up to the cliff. But there shouldn’t have been an even deeper, darker shadow on the left as well. The sun didn’t cast shadows in two different directions at the same time. At least, not in the world Richard knew.