The knights were headed in the direction of Aix, because it was a safer journey; ten miles north of Marseilles they took the road across the Camarga, in the direction of Arles. Wind and rain swept in over the marshlands. There was a low sky of tarnished silver plate above them, and little movement on the road ahead. The horses’ heads hung low and the riders pulled their cloaks tight. Nobody spoke. Henry of Huntingdon gave thanks silently that the day was so foul. Perhaps the Virgin was looking after them. All day they struggled towards Arles. Sheets of rain like a silver curtain drove in from the south. Master Robert sat slumped on his horse, his back bent, his hood pulled across his face, his hands resting on the pommel. He may have been asleep. Now the cart had to be pulled out of a deep rut, and the two extra packhorses were harnessed for the task. It was a frightful, demoralising day. Wet through, cold and exhausted, they finally arrived at the
commanderie
of Arles. The gates opened onto a courtyard and the horses were taken away to be fed, while the treasure was moved under escort to the chapel by Knights Templars, as if they were conducting a vigil for a hero.
Although Templar rules forbade falconry, Roger de Saci’s bedraggled bird was housed in a chicken coop and fed two dead mice, which it ate quickly and without joy or gratitude, watched closely by Roger de Saci. Henry was surprised it had survived the journey.
‘Did you pray for the bird?’ he asked.
‘I did. As we rode, I was praying to the Virgin for my family and my falcon.’
‘But perhaps not in that order.’
In the Latin Kingdom, de Saci had been an avid falconer. His sire, Richard, also enjoyed the sport. De Saci’s devotion to this bird, with its ruthless eyes, was a mystery to Henry.
The Master, Guillaume Soliers, greeted them as they assembled. He spoke on behalf of all Templars when he beseeched the Lord to aid them in their mission and he thanked them for their noble work in the Holy Land. He reminded the assembled that these men had fulfilled their vows and were bound for heaven and eternal life. During the meal a choir sang the Templars’ own Gregorian chants. After they had eaten, Soliers and the knights retired to discuss the way ahead. The Templars were strong enough to provide an escort, but not far beyond Arles, Soliers said, nothing could be guaranteed. He recommended that they travel as ordinary pilgrims, returning from the Holy Land.
Despite their vows of poverty and service, the Templars had acquired a very high opinion of themselves. You could never be certain where they saw advantage. But it helped Henry’s cause that his relative had been the Grand Master of the Templars in England. Hubert Walter had prepared the way, and Soliers had been receiving intelligence of what lay ahead on their way to Rouen. It was in Arles that they received the news that Hubert Walter was their king’s choice as Archbishop of Canterbury. It pleased them that a brave companion and a justiciar of the realm should receive this honour. They drank to Hubert, and de Saci gave his falcon a lump of meat, impaled on the end of a dagger.
Soliers passed to Huntingdon a message from Hubert Walter, which instructed them to wait before moving north. The message to move out would be ‘stronger than iron’.
He who carries it, and cherishes it
Remembers his friend,
And thus he becomes
stronger than iron;
This will be your shield and hauberk.
For ten days they waited. The news from the north was that John and Philip were desperately trying to make gains before Richard was released and many nobles of Richard’s kingdom were trying to decide where their advantage lay. Some were for John and Philip. Master Robert, the clerk, sought information wherever he could; he discovered that the Count of Angoulême was turning towards Philip of France. He noted which castles John had bought or captured. He was watchful and meticulous.
Huntingdon said that he would gladly kill John in combat, if John were man enough to accept the challenge.
‘You know perfectly well that he is a coward. Is that why you will issue the challenge?’ said de l’Étang.
‘He is a coward, and what he is most frightened of is our sire.’
They drank to their incomparable king. They praised his bravery and good nature and his singing voice. They were full of bitterness for the traitors who had taken him prisoner, men who themselves had sworn to aid all who had taken the cross. They had lost their souls for gold. The knights swore that there would be a price to pay. Bartholomew de Mortemer recited some lines of Richard’s ‘
Ja Nus Hons Pris
’:
They knew full well, barons and my men,
Of Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou,
That I have never had a vassal
Whom I leave in prison for my own gain;
I say it not as a reproach to them,
—But a prisoner I am!
Mortemer wished them eternal damnation:
After my death they will be called to account.
In the dark of night, Henry of Huntingdon prayed, as he did every night, to the Virgin that she might guide them to deliver the Holy Cross to Rouen, the very cross on which her son was crucified, and then he prayed that she should permit him to go home, his vows fulfilled, his sacred task complete. He was longing to see his wife and children and his lands again. But the message to move out did not come for two months. And the King himself was not to be released until the following year:
I grieve greatly for myself; for them still more
.
20
Stephen has set
me free. I am happily writing my account of Richard and the Holy Cross.
Emily emails me. She has a new boyfriend, actually more of a partner. She felt she owed it to me to tell me. They are living together. He knows about me. They have no secrets. Would I like to meet him?
No, I fucking well wouldn’t. And in this respect, at least, she doesn’t owe me a thing. She wants to buy me out of the unsold flat in Hackney. Her boyfriend has a legacy and he is offering to put up half the asking price; taking into account the outstanding mortgage, he is prepared to pay me £10,000. And – great news – he has a very good eye, and believes he can smarten up the place relatively cheaply.
I email my congratulations, and accept the offer. I write:
I am very happy for you
, which is both ungrammatical and untrue. I have detected, I think, an attempt to make me jealous; she wants some sign from me. She doesn’t want to think that our many months together have left no traces on me.
It is a long email. Her partner is in music. He specialises in finding promising young acts, like Speed Wheels, who I have never heard of. Her writing is going well. She has submitted a short story to a competition. She has also sent it to an agent.
This picture of an interesting and creative lifestyle could be translated by the cynical – me – as meaning that her boyfriend has some money left to him by his granny, which he is squandering, and that she is heading inevitably for literary rejection, so that she will have to take the teaching diploma and embark on a career, an important component of which will be eating biscuits in the staff room as refuge from the delinquent pupils. And her partner will eventually become a minicab driver or go into garden design, laying turf for lawyers. But I am happy about the money.
I end on an upbeat note:
He’s a very lucky man, and I think your offer is fair and generous
. I append my address and my bank details to speed up the transaction.
I have been in an ecstatic phase, jumping out of bed to get back to my narrative, my novel, my historical biography, my picaresque, my reverie – call it what you want.
Ella and I went for a walk on Port Meadow yesterday. It was the first time we had met since I was discharged from hospital.
A large part of the meadow was under water. Swans and ducks and geese were making merry, where earlier cows and ponies – some of them Shetlands – had grazed calmly. At any moment Noah might appear in his DIY ark. It seemed happily disorderly to me – ducks swimming about everywhere – but then, how would these birds, with their tiny brains, distinguish between flooded grassland and legitimate, bona fide lake or river? Or Mount Ararat. A whole new world had opened up to them.
Ella was heavily disguised in dark glasses and a hooded jacket. The fact that we had done nothing wrong, apart from the solitary kiss, which took place at a time when my mind was disturbed, suggested that she felt some sexual tension between us. Of course, she was recently my shrink and I was just an irresponsible lay person, helpless against the forces of derangement. Also, she had shown me the path out of the dark forest. But now her nervousness began to inhibit me. The water was just below the bridge as we crossed the river – it was running alarmingly strongly, and contributed to the sense of Old Testament disorder. We walked through the wet afternoon to the Perch. She went ahead of me into the pub, presumably as a precaution against running into somebody who would report her to the BMA for consorting with a lunatic. I followed a few minutes later, as though I had arrived separately. This was her neurotic plan. The pub was empty, apart from a barmaid polishing glasses, and two young men looking at their phones. Somewhere off stage was the sound of plates being stacked. The atmosphere was torpid. We ordered red wine.
‘Ella, this is crazy. You must be able to talk to your patients.’
‘I know. But it’s more than that. You shouldn’t have kissed me.’
‘Nobody saw us. Anyway I was drugged – by you.’
‘I know, but it made me think about Clive, and how I can’t really stand the idea that he is
seeing
(she makes quotation marks in the air) someone else. Fucking someone else. When you kissed me – by the way I am not making any demands on you, not at all – when you kissed me, it brought up a lot of issues I was suppressing.’
‘That sounds quite Freudian.’
‘Whatever. Actually, Freud was a total fraud. It started me thinking about what I was going to do.’
‘Ella, when I told you that I couldn’t imagine anybody leaving you, I meant it.’
She looked at me, appraising.
‘You have an elusive quality.’
I wondered what this elusive quality could be.
‘Why don’t you just tell him to fuck off. Or is that not the professional way?’
‘It’s not that easy. He’s moved into her flat. She’s called Chelsea, can you credit it? I told him I was going to call myself Holland Park. It’s so fucking banal and predictable and actually sick-making when he says, as if he is prey to forces he can’t control, that against his will he has fallen hopelessly in love. I am supposed to understand.’
‘And obviously, you don’t.’
‘No I don’t.’ She stared at the fireplace. ‘Thanks for listening to me. I’m sorry to vomit on your shoes.’
‘Come, let’s go to my place.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
She looks at me and I kiss her, emboldened by wine. The two men in a corner barely notice us.
Now that she has something to be properly guilty about, she puts on dark glasses and pulls her hood down and avoids eye contact with walkers. She behaves so furtively that she is conspicuous. I laugh.
I know that Ed is away. We go straight to my little bedroom. In my mind it is not a betrayal of Noor, but a form of therapy, possibly for both of us.
Later, we lie in the tangled sheets, oddly content. Just the act of sex has calmed her completely. Outside my small, and smeared, window, the light is fading. At another time the crepuscular tones might have been the signal for melancholy, but I feel strangely happy.
‘Richie, that was wonderful. I just can’t explain what it is like to be ditched by someone in this way. It was shattering. It was a stab to the heart. But somehow sleeping with you has trivialised my worries. Was it OK for you?’
‘Lovely, wonderful. But look, I’m very sorry, but I can’t see you again, because if we had a relationship, I would be doing something terrible to Noor that might finish her. It’s very complicated, but I couldn’t do that. I hope you understand.’
‘I do, of course I do, but it is difficult. This is the first time I have felt happy for months.’
‘Me too.’
She had a high colour. Her lips were bruised. She held on to me tightly for a moment. It is a strange, spiritual, thing – two bodies trying to become one in this way. Two near-strangers doing something so elemental, so intimate and so irrational.
‘Where’s your friend Ed?’ she asked, some immeasurable time later.
‘Oh, he’s in London having an interview for a job in Australia. He’s hoping to be the investment manager for the University of Western Australia in Perth. Ella, what did you mean when you said I was elusive?’
‘You are hard to pin down. It’s very attractive, by the way.’
I could tell her that I am not elusive, merely half-formed.
21
The Master of
the
commanderie
was becoming restless. Although his position in Arles was princely, there were rumours in the town, no doubt reaching the Count of Provence, that some of the Lionheart’s knights had taken refuge with the Templars. Of course, the Templars were duty bound to help pilgrims who had been to the Holy Land, but these were not ordinary pilgrims; the rumours had it that they were important men, carrying something of importance with them. The region was in even more turmoil than usual, and Soliers had to avoid offending the powerful. Particularly he had to avoid the impression that the Templars were becoming a law unto themselves.