Authors: Jane Johnson
He spun around to confront Hammer and Saw, who had come to practise their own scene. “And when you two piss on the True Cross, you have to make them want to kill you for it.”
Saw looked to his twin. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“You, Michael, yes?”
Hammer nodded uncomfortably, not liking that anyone with authority should know his proper name.
“Do it with a real flourish, right?”
Hammer hoicked the length of sheep’s intestine out of his breeches and swung it about with suitable abandon.
Bishop Reginald tapped the Moor on the shoulder and they went aside to sit on a bench. I watched them with their heads bent together as if they were sharing secrets and felt a raging jealousy. When it became clear that Savaric had usurped my role as rehearser of the troupe, I crept away to find out if they were talking about me, just in time to hear Reginald ask of him, “You did not like the Lady Chapel?”
I watched the Moor hesitate. “It is fine work. But something about it is … unsatisfying. The colours are visionary, and the arcades are lovely. But even with all the candles it was dark in there. The windows are too small, the pillars too thick. It does not lift the soul. The prayer hall in the Great Mosque in Cordoba, on the other hand, with its bicoloured pillars and infinity of arches, combines great power with a delicacy of effect. And I have heard
that the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, based on the Prophet’s own mosque in Medina, is even more perfect in its design. I would dearly love to see it for myself one day.”
The bishop leaned back, musing. “I have such plans for Wells, you see. The foundations are laid, but I want to be sure … not to repeat the mistakes of the past. The problems of combining height and the need for light with sufficient strength in the structure …” He dipped his head so that I had to strain to hear and by a prodigious effort caught “fountains of light” and “soaring pilasters,” “great arches reaching skywards.”
My skin began to tingle. Blood rose in my cheeks, beat in the tunnels of my ears. When I succumbed to my falling sickness, I would smell the scent of roses and see a pair of tall doors opening before me, beyond which impossibly tall pillars, joined at their apex by sharp arches, rose into a light-filled dome or a golden sky. The sensation that overtook me at these times, after the initial panic, was one of intense serenity that enfolded me like angels’ wings. I had no control over these fits, or of the images that accompanied them. How were a churchman and an infidel privy to my visions? I had never spoken of them to anyone.
The Moor’s brow smoothed as if he had solved some puzzle in his mind. “To make a place where contradictory elements may be reconciled.”
The bishop sat back with a look of fierce bliss upon his face. “To invite the immanence of the transcendent.”
“A place where earth touches Heaven.” The Moor looked right at me with a gaze so penetrating that I felt my soul peeled naked. “John, fetch your drawing things.”
I had been drawing—little caricatures and portraits of the troupe, trees and churches, bits of building—for some weeks, but secretly,
fearing ridicule and reprisal. I had hidden my poor efforts from everyone beneath my pallet. But one day, a few weeks ago, I had come upon the Moor with my tattered drawings spread before him on the floor of the dormitory at Bath Abbey while the others were at prayer—or more likely in a tavern.
“These are good,” he’d told me, a curious expression on his face.
I tried to gather them up, but he put his hand on my arm. His touch made my heart thunder. I shook him off in another sort of terror, grabbed my drawings and ran away, down the stairs and outside, where I dropped them down the well.
The next day, like a man attempting to charm a wild animal, he’d found me when I was alone and held a small packet out to me.
No one had ever given anything to me without expecting something in return.
“Go on, take it.”
It was a bit of old oiled cloth. “What have you given me this for?” I was disappointed and angry.
“Open it!”
Inside the cloth were leaves of creamy white, bound with fine silk. I touched them with wonder—so soft, so smooth. “What are they?” I had never seen anything so white—it was like being given pieces of the moon.
“Paper,” he said. “For your drawings. And this, too.”
Out of his satchel came a small stoppered bottle and a reed cut into the form of a pen. He dipped the reed in the ink and ran a black line down a page, spoiling it. Three more strokes, four, then he turned it to me. It was his face, but it wasn’t. I laughed out loud. The proportions were all wrong.
I took the pen from him and did what he’d done, but I had only used quills before: I used too much pressure, and made a hole. The next time I left a blot. The third time in a few swift lines I drew his profile: his long, straight nose, cheekbones like carved wood,
strong chin. It was not difficult, I had drawn his likeness about a hundred times before.
He stared at it, astonished, then at me. I held his gaze, trying to be the man I hoped I had become, but then quailed and looked away. We never spoke of this moment after—of either the drawing, or the touch.
The next day, on a pretty sward of land at the foot of the Mendip Hills some miles to the southwest of Bath, back on the road towards Glastonbury, we pulled up our horses and dismounted, in my case with some relief.
Bishop Reginald spread his arms wide. “This is Wells, the Place of Many Streams,” he told us, beaming with pride, “where all the holy springs meet and join as one. It is the most beautiful and blessed place in all of England.”
Between the willow trees, over a gleam of water, I could see some small stone houses, a cluster of ecclesiastical buildings, a jumble of cottages and some barns and pigsties. There was also a great pile of rubble and evidence of what must once have been an ancient church, now no more than ruins, a scurry of men with barrows and picks, and innumerable trenches and holes in the ground. It looked more like a battlefield than a blessed site.
“Here I shall dedicate to Saint Andrew a wonderful new church, the largest and most beautiful ever built in England.”
I’d never seen the bishop so animated. He ran from one place to another, pulling the Moor along by the sleeve, pointing up and down and sideways, talking, talking. Dawdling behind them, I saw the Moor stop suddenly and describe an arch in the empty air, his hands flowing up to a point, then sweeping down again. Then they were off, chins wagging, heads nodding, leaping over the trenches into the centre of the sward. Dodging a pair of workmen staggering
under the weight of a huge stone, I ran after them, my satchel banging against my hip.
“The cloisters are extraordinary,” the Moor was saying as I caught up to them. “I have visited the Qairouan Mosque, and at Puy they have experimented with new forms influenced by Islamic designs, a method of spreading the weight of the walls in such a way that the space between them may be opened high and wide. It is quite breathtaking. Something about the angles of the
sekonj
, which support the vaulting, setting it at a diagonal between two walls. And the formation of the cupolas. Domes like a golden sky.”
“Puy is one of the points of departure for the pilgrimage route to Compostela,” the bishop said.
“I have read the
Kitab Ruyyar
, describing the route.” The Moor nodded. “But I have not yet walked the Way. You know the old story is that they brought Saint James’s body back from Jaffa in a ship made of stone? I have always believed that image to be symbolic of the church there.”
A mason was summoned and another earnest conversation ensued. The mason called a new man over and he went running off, to return a few minutes later with a flustered-looking greybeard. Then the whole long conversation was repeated, with the Moor making wild gestures in the air and the old man furrowing his brow.
“John, if I describe something to you, can you draw it for me?”
I had been kicking at a stubborn tuft of grass, bored by their chatter. A beetle was burrowing its way into the earth, away from the disturbance of my boot. I looked away from it unwillingly. “I doubt it.”
“Come here, John.”
His eyes locked on mine. I walked towards him, drawn by the dark lodestone of his gaze. Quite against my will I found myself saying, “I can try.”
It took several attempts, for I couldn’t visualize what he meant, but at last we had a sketch of what he was trying to convey.
The old man clucked his tongue. “Ah, you mean squinches.”
“Sekonj.”
The Moor grinned. “Yes!”
The greybeard shook his head. “Can’t be done.”
There followed a protracted argument, during which my attention wandered. Light and strength; strength and light. In my head danced a procession of pillars and arches. Fair white stone, hard as iron, gave way to softest petals. The scent of roses.
The edges of my vision began to haze. I swallowed, braced myself. I would not fall, I would not shame myself …
When next I was aware of myself I found that my lap was full of drawings. Sweeping lines, elegant curves. Had some angel entered my body and guided my hand? For once it appeared that I had not measured my length on the ground and jerked and jinked, but had sat quietly, sketching like a man possessed. Once conscious, I drew on, letting the Moor’s words push the charcoal across the surface.
“That’s it, John. But even taller. Up to the sky!”
We ran out of paper. A boy was dispatched to fetch it from the church stores, and I sketched some more.
“It’ll never hold,” the greybeard opined, shaking his head grimly over my drawings.
“It will,” cried the Moor. “It’s stronger than the Roman arch, see?” He made an adjustment to a sketch.
By the end of the day they all seemed very excited.
“And then a great window here, and tall, pointed inlets of light …”
“But I can’t work from mere sketches,” the greybeard warned at last. “It’s all very well striving for something so new, but it carries a great risk if it goes wrong. Towers collapse, and if there’s a
congregation gathered beneath …” He spread his hands. “I’ll need mathematical plans, master masons used to working with these foreign forms. It’ll be costly. Very costly.” He sucked his teeth.
Bishop Reginald patted him on the shoulder. “We will get you masons and mathematical plans, good Adam. One way or another.”
The old man squinted at the Moor. “And what’s to say this Saracen here don’t mean to undermine your entire scheme, on purpose, like?”
“I am not a Saracen,” the Moor said.
By the time we were ready to set off it was almost summer, though you’d never have guessed it. As we crossed the River Parrett, a freezing wind blew horizontal rain in across the Somerset Levels, soaking us to the skin. The Bridgwater docks were busy, but the workers showed little interest in the show, and the grim weather kept most folk indoors, so there were blessed few to witness the shambles of our first public performance.
Having missed his cue, then forgotten his single line, Quickfinger stumbled off the edge of the stage, blinded by his helmet, and with unerring aim fell on top of a well-built woman, who went down under him like a capsized ship. Her husband beat Quickfinger off her, a fight broke out, and Savaric’s steward was robbed of his purse in the ensuing melee. No one could be induced to take the cross, and the few who had let curiosity overcome the rain suddenly drifted away as soon as the collection pots came out.
I looked at the Moor. “Christ’s breath in a bottle, we’re all going to hang!”
The players were searched, but of the steward’s missing purse there was no sign.
The next day, after travelling to the wool town of Taunton, the sun came out and we put on a better display. We came away having
signed fifteen young men with the cross, much to the distress of their wives and mothers.
We were rewarded by a stay at the local Benedictine priory, during which time the Moor and I went carefully through the troupe’s possessions until the purse turned up in Ned’s boot. Miraculously, the second morning, after mass at the high altar, the steward found his purse again, caught in the deep hem of his cloak. Savaric apologized to us all, though it was clear he was suspicious. Later we took Ned outside and delivered a painful reminder of the rules of the contract. That evening, his bruised ribs well strapped, Ned was surly but biddable, like a chastened donkey, but in the days that followed I sometimes caught him watching me through narrowed eyes.
Under the shadow of Rougemont Castle at Exeter, we managed a roistering performance, after which the bishop led the faithful in prayer and launched into an exhortation to action. Savaric then took over the stage, telling in ringing tones how that chief devil of the enemy, Saladin, had broken down the holy walls of the city and massacred the good Christians within. How babies were murdered one by one.
Out charged Ned, in blackface, with several ragdoll babies threaded onto his lance. “Ten thousand heads were severed! Blood ran through the streets in a torrent. Those who did not flee or were put to the sword were barricaded into churches and burned alive, their souls carried to Heaven in a pillar of smoke!” He squatted by a make-believe fire formed by blowing red and orange silk scraps with a bellows and pretended to roast and eat the babies, and a woman in the crowd fainted. The Moor had been persuaded against his conscience to put his knowledge of chemistry to good use and now burned minerals in a brazier out of the sight of the crowd so that a great cloud of green smoke swirled up. People gasped, never having seen anything like it before.
In the end they were queuing up to take the cross—young men
and old, singly and in roistering groups. One mother came rushing out of the crowd at the sight of her son being signed on the forehead by the bishop and dragged him away by his belt. “What will I do on my own, with your father gone?”
“It is his duty, goodwife,” Savaric roared. “Let him go, and be thankful you have raised him well enough that he can repay his debt to God, king and country!”
She would not to be put off. “My Alfred is in the ground for king and country, I will not lose my boy Jamie as well.”