King and Emperor

Chapter Sixteen

The man who faced Shef at the top of the ladder, youngest of the perfecti, hesitated as he saw the head of the barbarian king reach the level of the rock floor on which he stood and then continue mounting, rung by rung. He knew what he was supposed to do, had seen it done a dozen times before. If the candidate for election entered the Womb, passed the trials of the Serpent, the Woman, and Death, and climbed the graduale out of the Pit, then he should be met by the most junior of the Council, the one who had passed the trial himself most recently. And the junior should put a drawn sword to his breast and ask him the ritual question: How may an old man be born again? And enter again into the womb of his mother?

But it was supposed to happen in the dark! The candidate should have only the tiny candle-flame, symbol of the secret knowledge, and should see nothing till the sword was at his heart! It was only ritual by that stage, for every candidate, whether he was prepared or not for the trials, knew the question and the answer. But they were not supposed to see the tester or his sword till they were face to face.

In the lurid glow of the dry and burning corpses, Shef could see the man facing him perfectly clearly, could see the needle-pointed sword in his hand, could see too that he had no intention of using it. Behind the man at the front of the rock ledge sat a dozen more men in grey cowls, in a ring facing him. They too were supposed to be invisible until they spoke. As they realized they could be seen, the cowls looked this way and that, men shifted position, broke out in undignified whispers. To the tester and his comrades behind him Shef himself, rising out of the Pit with every stride, looked larger and larger, his shadow reaching out in front of him with a menace in it, as if the men murdered to outfit the trial chamber had sent a representative to take their revenge. The gold circlet on Shef's head and the gold bracelets on his biceps caught the red glow and sent angry glints across the secret chamber.

“Why did you do that?” hissed the tester. “I mean…” The test had already gone wrong. He stretched the sword forward, found his wrist grasped easily by a man far his superior in strength.

“Try again,” said Shef.

“How may a man be born again? And enter again into the womb of his mother?”

The question of his dream, Shef thought. He had not known the answer then. But he had just undergone a test, and passed it. The answer to this must have something to do with the form of the test. Something Christian, or half-Christian at least. How would Father Andreas have answered? Thoughtfully, using the Arabic in which he had been addressed, the common speech of the border, Shef replied, “Cast aside fear. And lust. And the fear of death. And so climb out of the grave.”

“That is not the answer! Not in the true words.”

“It's near enough,” said Shef. The wrist he was holding was thin, that of a hunter or a shepherd, or even a priest, not a plowman. With a sudden exertion of his smithy-hardened muscles he bent it backwards, heard a gasp of pain, and the sword ring on the stone floor. He released the wrist, stopped and picked the sword up. Slight curve, one edge, needle-point. A back-stabber's weapon. Holding it in his right hand he stepped towards the seated half-circle, stood looking grimly down at them.

“Why did you set the—the men on fire?” asked the cowl in the center.

“Because they were men. Like you and me. I do not mind killing people, but I will not have them mocked in death. Among the men of the North burning is as good as burial.

“Now. You brought me here by stealing my woman. You gave me a test and I have passed it. You must have something to say to me. Say it. I expect there is an easier way out of here than the way I came. Say your piece and then let us all go home. And for the love of all the gods, light some candles! I have no wish to speak in darkness or by the flames of a funeral pyre.”

The leader of the perfecti hesitated, aware that the initiative had gone from him. Yet that might be good. It showed at least that this man, this king, was no common man. It might be, might well be, that he was the one they sought. To gain a moment's time he pulled his cowl back, raised a hand, waved for the lamps to be brought out of their hiding-places in the stone and lit.

“What is it that you wear round your neck?” he asked.

“It is a ladder, which I am told you call a graduale. It was the Emperor of Rome himself who told me that. Many years ago and many miles away. Sitting on a green hill, outside a city wall.”

The perfectus licked his lips nervously. The conversation was getting away from him already. “It is the Holy Graduale,” he insisted, “which we in our tongue call the Seint Graal. But before I tell you why it is that, you must swear to tell no one what is said here in this chamber. You must swear to be one of us. For if what I have to tell you were to come to the wrong ears, there would be in it…” He paused. “The death of Christianity.

“You must swear to silence! What will you swear by?”

Shef considered a moment. These people seemed to have no clear idea of how to deal with him. The death of Christianity—that was nothing to him. They should have understood that. Yet he did not believe in swearing false oaths. It might bring bad luck.

“I will swear by this,” he said, laying his hand on his pendant. His father-in-heaven, or in his own mind, whichever it might be, would not worry about a false oath, or an oath honored only to the letter. “I swear by my own emblem and by your holy graduale to reveal nothing of what I am told in this chamber.”

Tension began to drain out of the seated men, out of the one face he could now see: an elderly man with a face of shrewd cunning, the face of a successful trader among peasants.

“Good. The story has come to us that you gave the Emperor the Holy Lance he bears. You must know, then, why it is the Holy Lance. It was the weapon of the centurion who stabbed Our Lord on the Cross.”

Shef nodded.

“Why should there be a ladder to go with a lance? I will tell you. After the centurion stabbed Our Lord, and the blood and water gushed over his hands, pious men prayed the Romans for Our Lord's body. They were Joseph of Arimathea and his cousin, Nicodemus.”

At the last name all the seated men moved together, making a zigzag sign across their bodies.

“They took the body down from the cross. And, of course, they used a ladder. That ladder is the graduale. They lashed the body to the ladder to carry it to the stone grave that Joseph had reserved for the man he accepted as a prophet.

“Now, king, I must ask you this. They tell me you were baptized, brought up as a follower of Christ. So, tell me this: what is it that the Christians offer to those who believe?”

Shef considered. This did not have the ring of ritual, seemed an honest question. He did not know the answer. As far as he remembered Father Andreas had said that Christians should be Christians or go to Hell with the heathen. Hell? Or heaven? Perhaps that was the answer.

“They offer life,” he said. “Eternal life.”

“And how can they offer it? How dare they offer it? They offer it because, they say, Christ Himself rose from the grave. But I can tell you. He did not rise from the grave of Joseph. Because he did not die on the cross! He lived.”

The perfectus sank back on his chair, to see the effect of his words. Not what he expected. Shef shook his head emphatically.

“A German centurion stabbed him. He called himself Longinus. Stabbed him with an infantry issue javelin, a pilum. I have held the weapon, I saw the blow.”

“The blow was struck. It went astray.” The perfectus considered the strange certainty of the man who faced him, went on, “It may be that crucified men, men kept upright with their arms above their heads, that they stand oddly, their hearts shift. It is strange that water ran out of the wound. Maybe Longinus pierced some other vessel. But when Joseph and Nicodemus went after the Passover to the tomb they had made, to embalm the body: they found the Christ alive. Still wrapped in his shroud.”

It was Shef's turn to think, to recognize a kind of truth. Ten nights before he had dreamed another dream, of the man waking from the dead with his arms bound to his sides and pain in his heart, a dream of horror. But it could have happened. He had known men to recover on the battlefield as their comrades prepared to throw them in the pit, it had happened to Brand himself. And Brand too had recovered from a deep belly wound. It did not happen often, but it could.

“What happened then?”

“They told a trusted few the truth. But soon the story spread that they find in the Gospels, that the tomb was empty, that an angel had appeared. That Christ had gone down to Hell to rescue the patriarchs and the prophets. The Christians say that story came from Nicodemus, for he was known to have had speech with Christ after his taking down from the cross. They read that story to this day in their false gospel of Nicodemus. But it is not true.

“The Christ did not die. Nor did he go back to his followers. They nursed him back to life, Joseph and Nicodemus and the woman they call Mary Magdalene. Then, secretly, Nicodemus the rich sold his goods, as did Joseph of Arimathea, and they and Jesus and Mary came here to this country. They left Palestine to the Jews and the Romans to fight over and came to the other end of the Inner Sea, but still within the old imperium of the Romans.

“Here they lived. Here they died. Here they bore their children, Jesus's children by Mary. And their seed is not yet dead. For we here, the people of the mountains, we can trace our blood back to him. And that is why we are the Sons of God!”

His voice rose in triumph on the last words, and the men sitting round him echoed them.

Yes, Shef thought. That is a tale the Christians would not like told. There is a great gap in it, for if the Jesus they claim descent from was merely another mortal, why should they call themselves the Sons of God, or believe in him? They have good reason not to. But they will have an explanation for that, just like Thorvin or Farman. Believers always do.

“What then do you want from me?” he asked quietly.

“The Graal. We kept it. It is in the deepest depths of Puigpunyent. But the Emperor knows it is there, has men digging for it every day. Soon, we fear, he will find it, and our holy treasures and testaments with it. And he will destroy them utterly, and the proof of our knowledge with them. We have to get them out. The Grail and the writings. Or drive the Emperor away. You—you came into our country with our holy sign around your neck, you passed the tests of our mystery without aid or prompting, some of us say that you are the holy Nicodemus risen again! We ask you to aid us.”

Shef scratched his beard. It was an interesting story. More interesting would be the way out. He was still in the power of these fanatics. “I am no Nicodemus,” he said. “But tell me. If I can do what you ask—and I see no way to—then what can you do for me? Your beliefs are not my beliefs, and your fear is not my fear. What is the price? And you must know that I am already a rich man.”

“Rich in gold. They tell us though that you search continually for knowledge, that you and your men try continually to fly, to do what has never been done before. They tell us that you search for the secret of the Greek fire.”

Shef straightened, his interest immediately caught.

“You know the secret of the Greek fire?”

“No. That is something we cannot claim. We believe that no one knows that save some few of the Greeks, and even they, it may be, only one small piece each. But we know something of fire, and what we know we will tell you. If you rescue for us our holy relics.”

The red fires behind them had burned themselves out, the room was now lit only by the clear light of half a score of lamps, like any other room in which men might do business, apart from the stone walls all around. “I will do what I can,” said Shef.

The Emperor of the Romans was learning what so many harassed leaders have learnt throughout history: that the number of helpers in a large and difficult task increases the number of problems, unless those helpers are so disciplined that they never act for themselves or for their own interest. Those who knew him noticed the whitening knuckles and the tension in his neck. Those who did not noticed only his quiet voice and the care with which he appeared to listen.

The baron of Béziers was at odds, it seemed, with the bishop of Besançon. Both contingents were about the same size, a hundred men or six score, and both were rated as middling in loyalty and care. They were not locals, and so would contain no secret heretics in their ranks, but they were not men of Bruno's own blood either. Both contingents had been sent to the middle ring of the three that Bruno had drawn round Puigpunyent, there to patrol the near-impassable scrub in the days and spend their nights sweltering in the heat that baked up from the scorched ground. They were arguing about water, as was everyone in the army. The baron thought the bishop's men were calling off their patrols early in order to get there first with their horses and mules, and leave his men only foul water to drink. Not that there was any water for ten miles round that was not fouled by now.

And all the time, Bruno knew, his diggers and pick-axe men pressed closer and closer to the secret. Only this day they had opened up a secret passage within the stone wall they were demolishing, one that led from a hidden garderobe in the walls down to the very foundations of the castle, to emerge in the depth of a ravine—an escape-route when the castle might seem to be surrounded. Bruno was confident no one had taken it. If they had, the garrison would not have needed to fight to the last. But where there was one hidden way, there would be another. From time to time a great crash cut across the noise of the giant encampment, as another stone was lifted from its bed by a hundred men with a sheer-legs, and hurled into the choked gullies far below. Bruno's head hurt, and the sweat crawled down his neck, and he yearned furiously inside to return to the demolition, spur on the teams and gangs. Instead he had to listen to two fools arguing in a language he could barely follow.

The baron jumped to his feet suddenly, cursing in his own dialect. The bishop shrugged elaborately, affected to misunderstand the gesture, took it as a request to leave. Yawning, he stretched his hand across the table, the episcopal ring glinting upon his finger: kiss my ring and depart, he pantomimed.

The baron, furious, slapped the hand aside. The bishop, sprung like the baron from ten generations of warriors, leapt to his feet in his turn, hand groping for the weapon he did not carry. In an instant the baron had his own dagger out, the long misericorde designed for stabbing through armor-joint or eye-hole.

Far quicker than the baron, quicker than the eye could see, the Emperor's own hand shot out, seized the baron's wrist. The ape-like shoulders moved beneath the patched leather jacket the Emperor still wore, a twist, a snap of bone, and the baron was huddled against the flap of the tent. The guards drew their broadswords as a matter of form, but barely changed position. They knew from many battles and skirmishes that the Emperor needed no protection. He was more dangerous with his bare hands than a skilled knight in full armor. Tasso the Bavarian raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

“Take him out,” said the Emperor briefly. “He drew a weapon in the presence of his Emperor. Let him see a priest and hang him. Tell the Count of his county to recommend to me on the succession to Béziers. Send his men home.”

He reflected a moment longer. “They will be rebellious. Take ten of them, cut off left hand and right foot, tell them it is the Emperor's mercy. You, your grace,” he added to the bishop. “You provoked him. I fine you a year's income of your see. Till it is paid you have our permission to undergo the discipline which your hot blood needs. Ten strokes a day with a choirmaster's scourge. My chaplain will see to it.”

He stared across the table at the whitening face, the face which after a very brief interval decided not to provoke the Emperor a moment further. The baron vanished, on his way to the already loaded gibbets on the edge of the camp. The bishop backed out, bowing and wondering how rapidly he could possibly raise a thousand solidi in gold.

“What's that noise?” asked the Emperor.

Tasso the Lanzenbrüder looked carefully out across the lines of tents and pavilions.

“Agilulf,” he replied. “Come at last.”

The Emperor's face broke into its unexpected charming smile. “Agilulf! He took his time getting here. But that means a thousand men, good Germans with Lanzenorden officers to control them. We can pull out those rascals we have guarding the west face and put some reliable fellows in their place. And I dare say Agilulf can find a couple of dozen good men with ropes' ends to keep those lazy devils on the rocks working. Ha, they have had a nice holiday by the sea, they will be ready for some real work.”

Tasso nodded. The Emperor seemed to have cheered up, his moods Swung a good deal these days. If the idiots in the tent had watched him carefully they would have seen it was no time to provoke him. Now, there might be a chance.

“Those men, you told me to cut their hands and feet off,” he ventured. “Ten, did you say? Or five? Hands and feet, was it?”

The Emperor's smile vanished, he was across the tent before Tasso could blink or think of protecting himself. Not that he would have tried.

“I know what you're up to, Tasso,” he said, looking up from his little more than average height to the eyes of his strapping captain. “You think I'm getting too tough with these bastards. Well, I'm getting tough because things are getting tough. There is no room for failure any more. Not with the devil loose. Not with the devil loose.”

“Is the devil loose?” broke in another voice, the harsh and hostile one of Erkenbert the deacon, reporting to his master from the ground where he labored continually at perfecting his siege catapults. “When that happens we can expect signs and wonders in the sky.”

In the Caliph's camp too, the bodyguards were uneasy. Every dusk, as the army camped, the impaling-posts were set up, every night was made hideous by the shrieks of men who felt the spike driving up through their bowels, as they fought to keep their footing on the iron ring that held them from death. A brave man, it was said, could sink down and let the spike tear out his bowels and his liver from inside. It was a long way from rectum to heart, though: too long for any normal courage. The Caliph was in a black mood, perturbed by the continuous defeats to which the followers of the Prophet were little used. His navies burned, or fled, his armies were trampled underfoot, or hesitated, came on slowly and reluctantly as now. There would be more screams and deaths unless good news came soon. Maybe even among the bodyguards. As they spread out the leather carpet and poised their scimitars, they prayed for distraction.

The captain of the cavalry patrols approached, dust matting his clothes. A young man dragged behind him by the wrists, struggling to get to his feet and shrieking imprecations. The bodyguards eyed each other with relief, waved the cavalryman through. A sacrifice for this evening already. Perhaps it would ease the master's mood.

Mu'atiyah did not notice the Caliph's baleful stare as he recovered his footing and angrily straightened his torn clothes.

“You are the pupil of bin-Firnas,” he said slowly. “We sent you to escort and guide the ferengis of the North, the fleet with its strange machines that was to sink the red galleys of the Greeks. They did not sink the galleys, but fled, or so the survivors told me before they were led to execution. What story is it that you have to tell me?”

“Treachery,” hissed Mu'atiyah. “My story is of treachery.”

No word could better have suited the Caliph's mood. He settled back on his cushions as Mu'atiyah, fury chafed by days of silence and contempt at sea, days of idleness and imprisonment among the Jews, told his tale: the Northerners' abandonment of the Arab cause, their cowardly reluctance to close with the Greeks, their ignorant sporting with the secrets of the wise. Most of all, the betrayal of the Prophet and his servants by the treacherous Jews, protected against the Christians by the favor of the Caliph, repaying it only by making common cause with pork-eaters and wine-drinkers. Mu'atiyah's sincerity was patent. Unlike anyone the Caliph had heard speak for weeks, he gave not a thought to his own safety. His urge was only, so much was evident, to fall upon the enemies of the Shatt al-Islam and exterminate them. Again and again his words veered towards criticism of the Caliph: he had been too lenient, he had let his secret enemies gain courage from his forbearance. It was criticism the Caliph was prepared to hear. The words of an honest man.

“When did you last drink?” he said finally.

Mu'atiyah goggled, became aware through his rage of his own thirst. “Before noon,” he said huskily. “I rode through the heat of the day.”

The Caliph waved a hand. “Bring sherbet for this faithful one. And let others mark his zeal. When he has drunk, let his mouth be filled with gold and a dress of honor prepared. And now, send for my generals and my admirals and the keepers of my maps. Let all be prepared to turn our march against the Jews. First the Jews, then the Christians. The enemy within the gate and then the enemy without.”

Marking the Caliph's good humor, those who held prisoners to be brought in and condemned to lighten the master's mood silently withdrew them. They would do, after all, for another day.