He called Henry of Huntingdon to his chambers. Soliers was wearing the white surplice that Knights Templars were obliged to wear at all times.
‘Henry, you have become a good and true friend.’
‘Thank you. You, Master, have in turn been a generous host and an honest friend. You wanted to speak to me?’
‘Yes, it is a delicate matter. Nobody here has broken silence, but nonetheless there are rumours in the town about the knights lodging with us. They say that you are guarding something of great value. There are rumours that you are conveying treasures from the Temple of the Hebrews, or that Richard the Lionheart has placed the bones of Our Lord in your care, or that you have brought from the Holy Land the Grail. As you know, we have been accused of possessing the Grail ourselves. And, of course, the Ark of the Covenant. The Grand Master has heard these rumours. He has decreed that you should move on as soon as possible. We have for some time been the object of suspicion. We are even rumoured to practise witchcraft behind our walls.’
Huntingdon knew that the Templars were envied and increasingly feared. Despite their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, they had become very wealthy because of their role as bankers to thousands of pilgrims. But they were also feared because they had ridden willingly to their death in many battles, most famously in the Holy Land. To die in battle was a great honour for a Knight Templar.
‘I understand,’ said Huntingdon.
‘The Grand Master wishes you to know that for the honour of your uncle, he will do all he can to see that you are protected on your journey.’
‘We are grateful.’
‘I will pray for you. You are doing the Lord’s work.’
‘I know that this journey will be difficult while your king is in captivity and I have prayed for his early release too. But there is turmoil everywhere. The Marche is especially turbulent. You should head for the Auvergne. The Grand Master has decreed that I send an escort of ten knights and their squires, twelve spare horses, and ten sergeants with you. And you should wear at all times our surcoat and the cross until you arrive in the Auvergne, when you should dress as pilgrims. These are the Grand Master’s directions. We will arrange two guides who will accompany you through the mountains to Lo Puèi de Velai and we will alert Count Robert of Auvergne, who is a former vassal of your king, and we will also alert the archbishop that you are to be given safe passage as pilgrims, returning from the Holy Land. My knights may go no further with you.’
‘I thank, you, Master.’
‘I am very sorry, my friend.’
‘I understand.’
Henry of Huntingdon spoke to his companions. They did not trust the Master. They did not trust the Templars, and they would have preferred to wait for the signal from Hubert Walter, the king’s voice, but they had no choice other than to prepare to leave. Each Knight Templar selected for the journey north was to be accompanied by his squire and the squires had to be summoned from their homes and families. Henry of Huntingdon sent a message to Hubert Walter in Poitou. He did not hold out much hope that Walter would get it before they arrived in the Auvergne. The message read:
Et si devient plus durs que fers: He becomes harder than iron
– the confirmation that they were riding out.
In fact it was two weeks before the convoy could set out, one morning before dawn. The weather had changed, and there was the scent of almond blossom in the air as they rode towards the shuttered town. The horses clattered through the silent streets. There is something stirring and also menacing about the sound of many horses moving through a town before dawn. The iron rims on the wheels of the wagons scoured the cobbles loudly. The journey to the relative safety of the Auvergne would take them five days. The knights, in their white surcoats emblazoned with the Templars’ red cross, were silent. Inside its hood, even Roger de Saci’s falcon was quiet. Nobody came out to watch this cavalcade passing through like wraiths of past battles, and past deaths. The Templars’ reputation for witchcraft ensured that the citizens of Arles knew better than to be seen to be inquisitive. In the wagon there was almost certainly a corpse, and who knew what uses the Templars had in mind for it?
Huntingdon was glad to be moving. He had found the delays hard to bear. His family was always on his mind. But he believed, as Guibert de Nogent famously expressed it, that ‘God has instituted in our times holy wars, so that the order of knights and the crowd running in its wake . . . might find a new way of gaining salvation.’
It is time to go home. He has found his salvation. He trusts in God to guide him.
22
I am afraid
that when Noor and I meet again I will see someone broken. People who have suffered severe trauma are often changed physically and mentally. My aunt, with her disappointments, her acute sense of the humiliation she had brought on herself by a lack of judgement when she left her husband, Andrew, the stockbroker from Fulham, for Sandy, the gamekeeper, is one. She and Sandy married, romantically, at Gretna Green as soon as the divorce came through. There is a photograph of them together. Sandy is every inch the outdoorsman, rugged and vigorous in his deerstalker and camouflage kit, with a large gun cover on his back. My aunt, if not beautiful, is slim and lively. She is wearing green wellington boots, and a dark blue skirt with polka dots. Her hair seems to have been modelled on Princess Diana’s. Her nostrils are flared eagerly, like an excited pony’s; something is in the air.
A few months after this picture was taken, my aunt’s ex-husband, who had moved his personal assistant, Arabella, twenty-six, into the family home, was cheerfully spreading stories that her marriage to Sandy was already on the rocks. Sandy was out on the moors most of the time, and in desperation my aunt was going into Banchory in search of a cappuccino or a reasonably recent copy of
Tatler
. Sandy believed she had a lover there. When he was at home, he barely spoke, and drank too much. If she questioned him, he became violent. She was ashamed to visit the doctor to have treatment for a fractured eye socket. Then Sandy blew his brains out and the colonisation of her face, her biblical punishment, started its march. She had a breakdown, but there was no one to turn to. From deepest Fulham, only waves of S
chadenfreude
reached her. My father visited once, but he didn’t like the vibe; suicide upset him. He left, after suggesting to her that she should drop out in Ibiza.
By the time I came to live with her, she was showing reclusive tendencies and, looking back, I could have helped her more. Her movements were prematurely slow and painful, as if she were willing old age upon her, but for all her misery, she went on reading. She understood the world through Dickens and Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell and Thackeray. She surprised me by recommending two authors I came to love, Saul Bellow and John Updike. I read solidly for four years and we discussed the books. We never talked about Sandy. My theory was that she had seen something elemental in Sandy that her husband, the stockbroker, lacked. That something, sadly, turned out to be a kind of Celtic resentment.
How will Noor be after her awful experience? Her upper jaw has required work, including implants. This kind of thing takes place too close to the brain. If I speak honestly – I appear to be borrowing from the Lionheart’s song – I don’t know how I am going to deal with the question of rape. I have had visions of Noor with a born-again look, like a reformed alcoholic, with a stoicism brought on by suffering. In my sleep I sometimes see her smiling vacantly, her gaze a little odd, her glorious red hair cut short, in a penitential gesture:
I am shriven.
Worse, Noor might decide that her kidnap has made her a better person, with a deeper understanding. She might start a foundation, because nothing can be explained in this world simply as evil or inexplicable.
But what I fear most is that the innocent days, the blood-orange-trickling-between-her-breasts days, are over. We could become locked into something dutiful, her terrible abuse tying us together. I want to talk to Ella about these worries; I want to know if they are normal; I want psychiatric absolution. But if I do talk to her, I think we will end up in bed together. And what are words really, but a palliative, a groping for comfort and reassurance? Hamlet, tersely to Polonius:
Words, words, words
.
I call Haneen and to my surprise she takes the call.
‘Haneen, how are you?’
‘Fine. I have just arrived in London – ten minutes ago – and was going to call you myself later. Can we meet?’
‘When is good for you?’
‘Tomorrow. Come to my apartment. Eleven a.m.’
She gives me the address.
‘We have lots to talk about.’
‘How is Noor?’
‘She is brave. A very brave girl. She’s improving, but it breaks my heart to see her like this. We will speak tomorrow.’
I am already cheered by hearing her effortlessly imperious and unequivocal voice. It brings back Jerusalem as keenly as the sound of bells. She will share with me some of her Levantine wisdom. I am anyway due in London for a visit to an exhibition of Crusader art at the British Museum, and I have to sign an agreement at a solicitors’ office in Hackney, which is required for my pay out. I am infused with dynamism.
Haneen lets me into her Candy Brothers apartment. It has a balcony with a view of the Albert Hall, and just beyond that, of some huge trees, semaphoring proximity to Hyde Park, one of the holy places. She embraces me, and starts on a tour. The furniture is low to the ground, and impersonal, as in an airport departure lounge. She says it was a show flat and they included the furniture and fittings. She says that they were surprised at her skill haggling.
‘You know what Woody Allen said, the only crime in our family was buying retail. I could have bought a large piece of Jerusalem for what I paid, but I am not going to have regrets. The time has come.
Sans doute
. Definitely. How are you, my boy?’
‘I’m fine. How’s Noor?’
‘Well, hopefully, she has had all the operations. Six of them. She’s very upset because the doctor told her that there is little chance of her having a child without intervention. And of course, she is unsure of her future. Also she is frightened. She wonders how you can have a future together.’
Perversely, I feel a surge of relief, that she doesn’t have blind faith in the love-conquers-everything mantra.
‘What I was going to say to you is that we think – Noor and I – that it is best for you two not to meet again. She has to make a new life. She knows in her heart that she can’t be involved with her half-brother romantically. She can’t be in love with you. It’s not possible. Her mental state is very fragile. Richard, I love you as my son, and I have tried to think of some way out that is good for both of you, and really, to tell the truth, I have failed. The first thing is to get Noor well, but I don’t think she is ever going to recover if she thinks that in some way you will be able to live together. She knows this is logical, but she doesn’t want to believe it.’
‘My idea was that, when she was better, in her own judgement, we would go to a Greek island and have a long holiday together.’
‘Richard, I think you have to give Noor the chance to forget. You know what psychiatrists say and what they all believe? They say that there is no such thing as true forgetting. All experiences leave a trail. If you go to this Greek island, what’s going to happen? I can tell you. You will, both of you, feel obliged to find a solution and then – or perhaps a few months later – you will feel trapped in your past and your obligations to each other. I believe, and Noor accepts it, that you must have a complete separation. You knew her for five or six weeks only and a terrible thing happened to her that will live with her for ever. Richard, you aren’t the answer to her problems: she can’t marry you, she can’t have a physical relationship with you, she can’t have your baby – she’s lost one already – and she can’t forget what you might have had, and she will for ever feel cheated. So how can you be part of her life? In my opinion you can’t and believe me I have lain awake for nights without end worrying about it. She must move on, as they say. Am I right?’
‘Probably. But can I think about it?’
‘Of course. But remember, it’s even more complicated because my brother and his wife don’t know all the facts. Can you imagine the hell she would go through if my brother – who is her adoptive father – knew that you were her brother? This secret must remain our secret. Nobody – except maybe me – has done anything wrong, but I don’t think my brother could deal with that news. Already he is hinting to me that Noor overreached herself. It makes be mad, but I can’t react. He thinks we Christian Arabs should keep our heads down. Just what many German Jews thought. And the French Jews. He believes I encouraged Noor in her folly. To him human rights are deliberate mischief-making. All that sort of nonsense. By the way, you can use my spare room whenever you want. I won’t be in London again until the end of summer and it will be good to have someone here from time to time. I have a key for you and I will give the doorman your name.’
‘This is perhaps a little grand for me.’
‘It’s never a surprise to me how quickly people adjust to luxury. I’ve made up the bed for you if you would like to stay tonight. I want you to feel you can come here any time. I loved your father and now as I grow old I see you as part of my family. Is that acceptable?’