Kings of Albion

Chapter Thirteen

The following day I arrived at the usual time, and was shown in the usual way through a shady flagstoned passage to the pierced stone screen that separated the vestibule of Ali's house from the garden beyond. As usual the light glowed fiercely through the lacy Stonework and I could hear the tinkle of water and the chirp of birds beyond. The cedarwood door creaked a little as his gatekeeper, a huge black Nubian with pantaloons, a turban and scimitar, pushed it open and ushered me through with his usual exaggerated obeisance.

I climbed the two steps of black obsidian, the ferns brushed my shins, and I stood for a moment blinking in the hot sunlight before I realised that Ali was not in his usual place beneath the cardamom tree. I hesitated, but the gatekeeper urged me on. I crossed the flat, square stepping-stones and felt the welcome prick of coldness as drops of water fell on my feet, the furthest flung by the fountain. Ali's grey cat came out from under a bush and pushed herself against my hand as I stooped to tickle her behind her ear. Then I straightened and saw sheets of paper on the table where we normally sat. A jug of lemonade held them down, though indeed no air stirred to shift them. There was only one glass.

The top sheet was pure white rag and seemed to throb in my eye, so bright was the sun on it in spite of the fresh black writing; the rest, and there was quite a stack, were yellowed and curling at the edges. I took the top sheet and read:

My dear Mah-Lo,

Today I am tired and it is too hot. About this time of year, although I know it will bring back my inflamed and swollen joints, I almost long for the monsoon. The heat brings on a dangerous flux from my bowels, a disease I first contracted in darkest Ingerlond and which recurs every three months or so. However, I would not disappoint you and I have asked Murteza to lay out certain documents for your perusal which will carry the story forward, They are copies, made by Chamberlain Anish, of letters sent by Prince Harihara to his cousin the Emperor. Not all the originals made it to Vijayanagara, but Anish, as his duties demanded, made copies before sending them, and these are what you will read here. If they do nothing else they will corroborate for you the veracity of what I have told you so far, and of what I hope, Inshallah, or anyway if this filthy flux leaves me before killing me, I shall be able to tell you when I am fit enough to take up my tale once more on my own account. Yours and so on… Ali ben Quatar Mayeen.

I took my place on the cushioned stone seat, poured myself a glass of lemonade, and began to read.

Dear Cousin

We have arrived in the Pale of Calais and it is time I began the letters I promised you to let you know how we are progressing with the various tasks we set ourselves for this expedition. I shall not take up your time, or indeed mine, with an account of the adventures we had on our way here, fascinating though many of them were, since they are not relevant to the purposes of our coming hither. They can wait for our return when, no doubt over many evenings, they will help pass the time between supper and bed.

Calais is like an onion cut in half by the sea. It has many skins. First there is the Pale, a fortified frontier, enclosing a semi-circle of land, the second skin. The town walls make the third, near what would be, were it a whole onion, its centre. At its greatest distance the Pale is some twenty or more miles from the city walls and the fields and pastures between produce enough to feed the population. The fortifications that make up the Pale include ditches in front of low turf walls surmounted with a paling fence, which gives the name 'pale' to the whole area, two or three large forts built to cover the principal roads in and out, moats, canals, and where the natural rivers run in appropriate directions, they have been turned into obstacles.

Inside the Pale but close to it, on the southern side, is a larger fortress called Guisnes, which lies across the road that links Calais with Paris.

The walls of Calais itself are, we have been told and, no doubt, shortly we shall be able to verify this, substantial and castle-like. Inside are the streets and a keep; and finally there is the harbour itself, two basins one within the other, enclosed and protected by moles from both storms and seaborne incursions.

This whole area is held by the Ingerlonders and indeed is considered by them to be a part of Ingerlond, but is at this time contested by two different factions of Ingerlonders who are at enmity with each other. The first faction has as its base the fortress of Guisnes, built to counter incursions from the Franks, whose king claims Calais. However, the Franks are more occupied at the moment with the Burgundians than the Ingerlonders and are therefore not a threat to Calais. So, this first faction can use Guisnes as a base from which they can mount attacks on the second faction, which holds the town and port of Calais.

This first faction is led by the Duke of Somerset. He is a cousin of the King of Ingerlond. The King of Ingerlond's wife. Queen Margaret, sent him to Calais to wrest it from the Captain of Calais, who is the Earl of Warwick. An earl is a noble of high degree but not as high as a duke. Dukes must have royal blood, I think. The Earl of Warwick is a friend and supporter of the Duke of York, who is also a cousin of the King, but an enemy of the Queen. Somerset has good reason for hating Warwick, who killed Somerset's father in a battle some four years ago. I know this is all very confusing, and I confess I am not confident that I have understood it all myself. Perhaps it will become clearer as time goes on.

Guisnes is some way from the sea and we have to cross the sea to get to Ingerlond. The only harbour from which it is safe to arrive in Ingerlond is the harbour of Calais. Either we must get into Calais, which the Duke of Somerset and his army have been trying to do without success for some months, or go back to a Frankish port to the south-west such as Boulogne or Dieppe and this we cannot really do because it is now dangerous for us to go back into Francia. When we were in Francia we promised the Frank king we would have nothing to do with the Ingerlonders who are his enemies. And, anyway, the Ingerlonder ports are closed to ships from Francia. So, you see. We do have problems.

They are not helped by what the people here call 'the weather". It is not easy to explain what weather is to someone who has not experienced it. I will try. though, since I fancy it is going to play a considerable part in our lives in the months to come. Apparently the "weather" is even worse in Ingerlond than Francia. Let me start with rain.

Here it may rain at any time of day or night, for hours or only minutes at a time, as heavily as it does at home or very lightly in what they call a 'drizzle'. And, believe it or not, this changeability is a feature throughout the year. Which leads me to consider the year as such and the seasons, two of which we have already experienced – autumn and winter. But no. This will be altogether too confusing. Let me stay with weather. I'll return to the seasons later, apart from saying that this is the cold season, which is not surprising as the nights are twice as long as the days, while in six months' time it will be the other way round and the season will be summer. I suppose that just as the weather is now unbearably cold, compared with our temperate clime, it will become unbearably hot in the summer. But just now, as I have said, the days are short, gloomy and cold.

So much for rain. Now, wind. Wind is as variable as rain. It can blow from any direction at all, at any time of the day or night, or there can be no wind at all. It may be barely more than a breath or it may be a gale, but even when it is a gale-it comes in bursts and gusts, not continuous twisting blasts of wind such as occasionally fall upon the eastern coasts of our own country.

Although at this time of year the weather is generally cold, it may vary from intolerably cold, so that the water turns solid, to fairly cold so that the water that was solid in the morning is wet again by midday. We have had some snow. You remember about snow? Travellers from the mountains to the far north of our part of the world have told us about snow, and Ali ben Quatar Mayeen warned us that it might be encountered. Well, we have had some snow, but so far, like the hard water or 'ice', it has melted away to water before midday, leaving even where muddy and dirty.

But what I must emphasise above all else is the unpredictability of all this. It is hardly ever the same weather two days running. The only thing you can say about it is that it is almost always, one way or another, uncomfortable. And cold.

I can't tell you how messy it all is. I am writing at a desk in front of a tiny window in a tower overlooking the land that stretches between here and the town twenty miles away. The desk is rough-hewn to the extent that the quill I am using, as you see, splatters and bumps over the ridges beneath. The stone walls are undressed too and irregular, the stones just piled on each other with mortar slopped between them. The window is glazed with tiny pieces of glass, none the same as any of the others, held together by strips of lead. The glass is translucent, just, but not fully transparent. It is cloudy and it distorts the view. My desk is lit by a candle, although it is midday, made from animal fat, mutton from the smell of it, and it smokes. There is a small fire of smouldering logs in a large fireplace. All the heat goes up the chimney. There are hangings on the walls, with hunting scenes crudely stitched into them, spoiled by the grubs of moths that live in the interstices.

Opening the window, which I have to do if I want enough light to go on writing, I look out over sodden fields, fanned in strips, copses of leafless, dead-looking trees, a road that angles round the holdings of the peasants towards the distant town, which is a smudge of smoke on the horizon. The road is not a real road but a narrow strip of mud and puddles, the mud a pale brown except where the rock shows through, not really rock but a softish, powdery, white material at present slimy with rain.

There is no living thing in sight at present but there are a couple of dead ones: on a rise near the road there is a gallows where two bodies, hanged by the neck, slowly twist. Earlier a bird, big and black with a heavy grey beak, pecked and tore at their faces, but even it has now gone. The poor souls were accused of spying on behalf of those Ingerlonders who hold Calais under the Earl of Warwick.

You know what it is, cousin, about this place? I'll tell you. It feels unfinished, half made, as if Parvati, the Creatorix. has been called away to more pressing business only shortly after she has started. Or put it this way. Parvati, having Started the act of creation on the banks of one of our sacred rivers and brought what she created to an early completion and perfection, moved out in a series of concentric circles, and, after many hundreds, indeed thousands, of years has only just begun her work here.

Enough for now. I have just been called to the council chamber of this Duke of Somerset.

I'm back now from the council chamber. This young Duke of Somerset – he's not more than twenty-live – is a proud man and kept us waiting as other supplicants appeared in front of where he sat, like a king, on a throne. When it was our turn, he expected us to make a deep bow when we were first ushered out to stand in front of him. I must confess I am disappointed. I had expected that the nobility at any rate would have manners, a sense of what is fitting. He knows who I am. He knows that I am cousin to an emperor, lie has no cause to give himself airs. As far as I can gather he is as much besieged in this squalid little castle as those in Calais are besieged by him. He has only a thousand men here with him though he says he daily expects reinforcements as soon as the weather is good enough to allow them to land on the beaches.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Ali has managed things well, as he always does. In return for several pounds' weight each of ginger, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom and cloves, this duke is going to give us a sale-conduct to the gates of Calais, but only if we give an undertaking not to cross the Channel and visit Ingerlond. Instead we have agreed, once we have access to the port, to take a boat up the coast to a Germanic city called Bremen and trade there. Apparently it is an important member of the Hanse. A League. which is a cartel of merchants who rule the ports along the mainland coasts from Bruges to Muscovy and control almost all the trade in the area except that of Ingerlond. Since we have no intention of going there, this is all by the way – Bremen is just Ali's excuse to get us into Ingerlond. I'll let you know how this works out as soon as the situation is clear.

Meanwhile, a quick word about Ali. He really has turned out rather well, for all he remains, in appearance anyway, as uncouth as ever. His mastery of languages is astonishing: he has been able to communicate with the locals in every country we have passed through. This should be no surprise since it is what he promised us, but I confess to being more impressed than I had expected to be. But he has also shown great acumen in dealing with people, getting things organised, trading off the goods we have brought, in what seem to me to be profitable bargains. Like the rest of us he now goes about in furs, in his case a long, shaggy coat, rather mangy and shabby. Shiva knows what sort of animal it came from. Underneath he keeps his old cape with the hole in it for his head, his turban and his loincloth. Yet, as ever, he manages to carry himself with a sort of reserved dignity that usually commands respect.

Anish, too, is turning out well enough, though he suffers from the cold more than most of us… A knock at my door. I'll finish this off when I have seen whoever is calling.

Well, it was Anish and Ali, with bad news. Our soldiers are to be sent home. Apparently the healthy darkness of their skins together with arms and accoutrements that appear strange and even devilish to these superstitious people have attracted hostility and, I would guess, envy. In short, Somerset refuses to let them go on with us. Ali thinks Somerset is afraid they will join Warwick and be used against him and that their magical powers may prove decisive. So. We will press on without them. Ali says we should have no difficulty in recruiting hired bodyguards whenever we think we need them. This reduces our little troupe to some ten or so including a Buddhist monk, who has hung around us since we left, and a fakir, who no longer amuses us – we have seen his tricks too often. However, he usually gets a crowd of the gullible in the villages and marketplaces we pass through who give him food and small change, which he shares with our Buddhist.

That really is all for now. The light is fading, this candle is burning low and stinking more than ever.

Our soldiers can take this with them. I almost envy them, despite the long haul they have ahead.

I remain, dear cousin,

Your devoted servant, Harihara

Chapter Fourteen

Dear Cousin

At least we are warmer, our accommodation is almost adequate, and the company merrier, though in a rough, buffoonish way. But, first, the last twenty miles that got us here. The roads we took was never less than ankle deep in mud.

Well, here we arc in Calais, in the castle or keep, and things are a little better than they were before. And often knee-deep. This Duke of Somerset stole our saddle horses – he called it requisitioning – leaving us only the pack animals, which in effect he confiscated as well but then, on Ali's insistence, agreed to sell them back to us. So, although we had to walk we were able at least to take with us the few precious commodities we still had left for trade and barter.

The rain continued to fall, blowing across the bleak plain like curtains of icy grey silk which yet, perhaps on account of the fineness ot the drops, seemed to penetrate our clothes or at any rate seek out the gaps between them and our skin. Our feet squelched in the yellowish-white clay, which contrived to be both sticky and greasy at the same time – that is, it stuck like overcooked unwashed rice to our footwear, yet when impacted presented a surface on which one slid and tumbled. Some of the small rivers we crossed had precarious plank bridges, just wide enough to take a narrow agricultural cart, but three of the lesser ones had no bridges and we had to wade through them, dragging our reluctant asses and mules behind us.

The fields were ploughed but not yet harrowed and water lay in runnels like strips of polished lead in the furrows. When, or if, the land dries out, the soil will be broken up and planted with seed which, in eight months' time, will carry grain, which they call rye and which they will grind for the flour to make the bread that is the staple diet of the ordinary people. We have already had our fill of it. It is heavy, grey, stodgy, sour stuff, which has caused most of us to be severely constipated. However, here in Calais the nobility eat a white bread made from wheat, which is almost palatable.

The leafless trees looked dead though some we were told, those planted in regular lines, were fruit trees and would bear fruit when summer, the warm season, comes. They keep these fruits in the roofs of their barns, wrapped in straw. We have eaten some. They are called apples. The skin is dry wrinkled and coarse, the white flesh squashy yet dry too. They are a pale brown but, we are told, when fresh they were a yellowish green and so delicious that they call them golden. According to Ali, the apples grown in Ingerlond are better.

There is meat available – beef, which of course we will not touch, pork, which Ali refuses, mutton and domestic fowls – though little is eaten by the common people. Almost all the animals and poultry they rear are taken into the city and sold so they can pay rent and taxes to the landowners, who are Ingerlonder gentry. They either boil it in pots or broil it over open fires. In neither case do they try to improve the flavour apart from smearing it with salt before cooking. It is thus either tasteless or disgusting. They drink milk, but straight from the cow without allowing it to mature or ferment so it is bland, ale, which is a sour strong liquor made from grain that has been allowed to germinate and rot, and wine, also very tart so it seems to take the skin off the inside of one's mouth. They do not drink water, which they say carries disease. Consequently the Ingerlonders are drunk by the end of every meal, including breakfast.

Although it was only twenty miles, this last stage of our journey took two days – partly on account of the shortness of the days but mainly because of the state of the road. We spent the night in a fortified tavern with a courtyard in the middle, stabling on three sides of the ground floor, a communal room on the other, and dormitories above. There was nothing in the way of hygiene. Travellers, male and female, were expected to piss and shit on the edges of a great pile of steaming muck in the middle of the courtyard – a mountain of human ordure and the sweepings from the stables. There were no washing facilities. Apart from those provided by the incessant rain.

This inn marked the border between the land controlled by Warwick, which we were entering, and that of Somerset, which we were leaving. We had been accompanied by a small troop of Somerset's soldiers who stayed at the inn, relieving their comrades who returned on the next day to Guisnes. At the inn there were soldiers in the service of Warwick. We expected them to fight, but though they were well armed they saw no reason to do so, which was the first mark of good sense I have seen amongst these people. They carried swords, bows and arrows, and wore rimmed helmets over chain-mail cowls, and jerkins. They did not carry shields, as these, they said, would interfere with their handling of the bows. Shields, they said, were for the gentry. I allowed them to see the keen interest I felt in their bows and they were kind enough to demonstrate them.

They are fearsome weapons. Each bow is a simple branch, shaped and seasoned, nearly six feet long. The arrows are a yard long and tipped with a slim but barbed steel point. Each soldier normally carries ten or a dozen at a time. They can shoot further than almost any crossbow and pierce armour up to half an inch thick at a hundred yards. But, in contrast to crossbows, they have one enormous disadvantage: they require huge strength on the part of the bowman to be of any real use. Most men in Ingerlond apparently begin training with a smaller version at an early age, and are required by their lords to keep up the practice into late manhood. The result is that you can tell an Ingerlonder, not one of the gentry but the ordinary countryfolk, by the swollen, overmuscled nature of his shoulders and arms, especially the right one, which pulls the feather flight of the arrow right back to his ear.

Although these two troops of bowmen were serving opposed masters they expressed no enmity or even dislike for each other through most of the evening, but ate and drank together in perfect amity. Until, that is, they got into a game of dice whereat a quarrel broke out with one man accusing another of cheating. By now, of course, all were drunk. The quarrel became a fight, but not with real weaponry, just fists, table-legs, chairs and so forth. The public rooms were wrecked, many heads were bloodied, and two or three were rendered unconscious. Then suddenly all fell back into friendliness again for no apparent reason, and they continued drinking ale together until all had fallen into a stupor as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

We woke to an almost cloudless dawn and a piercing cold wind that blew out of the eye of the rising sun. For a moment it was all almost beautiful: the sky above sapphire, then, in the east, rose-pink like the tips of lotus petals or wild roses; the ground, the broken furrows, the trees and their branches and twigs were all covered in a dust like diamonds that glittered in the sun. Almost for a moment I believed the verses my brother Jehani had copied out, describing a jewelled city. This dust was a little like snow but finer and is called frost. It is made from the tiny particles of moisture in the air that freeze then fall and collect on everything they land on.

In spite of the cold the brightness seemed to cheer everyone, not just us, but the soldiers, the bowmen, the other travellers and the servants in the inn. All bustled about slapping their sides to keep warm, shouting and even singing at each other, though some quietened down a little when a small girl, not more than three years old, was found in a corner of a barn where she had gone in the night to piss and had frozen to death once away from the animals and her parents, who had been drank.

We breakfasted off the foul bread and milk warm from the udder, though the bowmen pushed slabs of ground-up but barely cooked beef between pieces of bread and drank ale, and we were on the road again within an hour of the sun being fully above the horizon. At first it seemed easier than the day before because, with the frost, all the moisture in the soil hail frozen so one no longer had to wade and paddle through mud. However, it was all churned up into clods as hard as rocks and unless one kept one's eye firmly on where one was putting one's feet one might twist an ankle in an ugly fall. And then, of course, where there had been large pools or puddles there was now sheeted ice, cloudy like watered milk, and more slippery even than the most highly polished marble or basalt, even when wet.

Nevertheless, we got along and soon the walls of Calais took shape in front of us, a long, curving line of battlements marked off in sections by rounded towers. Much of the stone they were built from was pale, almost white, and gleamed in the sun that was now behind us but much of it too, especially near the top, was blackened with soot. Indeed, the whole city lay beneath a pall of black, greasy smoke for in winter they burn coal, a black rock of which there are many outcrops in the area, and which glows brightly and gives off great heat. However it also gives off a foul black smoke, sulphurous in smell and noxious too: apparently every year a great many people who huddle too close to their fires in winter or have chimneys that do not draw properly are asphyxiated by it. They fall asleep, then into a coma and die.

We were, of course, challenged at the gate, which was not hinged but suspended above the mad on hemp hawsers and lowered or raised by winches mounted high in the walls above. It is made out of a grid of heavy studded timbers leaving square gaps through which the defenders can see and shoot arrows at hostile visitors. It is called a portcullis, and since the principle of it might be useful to us. I have had it sketched.

Clearly we were neither Franks nor from Somerset's lngerlonders, which was the first concern of the captain in charge of the gate, and we soon persuaded him by showing some of our wares and the safe-conducts provided by potentates whose land we had crossed before entering Francia, that we were indeed what we said we were: merchants from the Orient. The colour of our skin bore witness to this for the captain, a knight, claimed his father had fought Moors and Turks in the eastern Mediterranean and had told him the men and women in those parts often had skin as dark as ours.

This led to a raucous discussion in their barbarous tongue, which Ali later told us turned on whether or not we were Mussulmen and therefore infidels and pagans. On our behalf he told these Ingerlonders that we were no such thing but had come from lands even further to the east than those occupied by the Musselmen and that one of the things we hoped to take back with us, along with the goods we traded, was the title religion of Christ the Saviour, and that anyway we were enemies of the Musselmen who hail been trying to conquer our country for seven hundred years.

The upshot was that after an hour or so, during which darkness began to steal slowly over the scene instead of falling quickly as it does in our country, we were told that we were free to find lodgings for the night in the town, and that we must present ourselves to the Earl of Warwick early the next day, or if not Warwick himself then some officer empowered by him to issue us with the necessary passports and permits. At last we entered the town.

The trouble with Calais is that it is too small for what it contains. The problem is wool. Wool is what the Ingerlonder economy depends on and the kings have made it a law that no wool should be traded abroad except through Calais. Of course, a trade so large attracts much commerce in other goods, and industries, too. so the small semi-circle, which if the streets were not so crowded one could walk across in less than fifteen minutes, is packed with wire-houses, counting-houses, and then, of course, housing for all employed here: ships' chandlers, ropemakers, sailmakers, ship-repairers and ship-builders, smiths and a hundred and one related trades.

The streets are narrow and dark for the second and third storeys of the buildings overhang each other and almost meet at the top so one can stretch a hand from one house to touch the hand of whoever lives on the other side. They are filthy too. You cannot begin to imagine how filthy. Every street is a midden and it is no rarity to see an alley completely blocked off by a heap as high as six feet of shit, kitchen refuse, broken furniture, old bricks where a house has fallen down… whatever.

Ali took us to the inn where he had been staying when the mysterious sadhu gave him the parchments from my brother Jehani but I took one look at it and said, 'No!' On our way here we have stayed in some pretty disgusting places as well as palaces, but this was beyond me. I took a second look and struggled not to vomit as the landlord's bitch, a giant mangy hound, shat copiously a foot from where I was standing. I then told Ali that, cost what it might, I wanted lodgings that were warm and clean and it was up to him to find them. Meanwhile, we took ourselves off to the main square and stationed ourselves round a stone cross that marked its centre, averting our eyes from a gibbet where the thirty-two quarters of eight dismembered criminals had been hung to rot. This, I must suppose, was where Ali's sadhu was burnt alive.

It was dark now but the square was lit by flambeaux made of smoky pitch, which I could see were not likely to last more than an hour. Presently it began to snow. The flambeaux hissed and spluttered and three or four were extinguished. There were, however, many sounds of revelry, raucous music, shouting and singing, and many windows overlooking the square were lit. I surmised that possibly some festival was in progress, and in this, as you will shortly learn, I was right.

I had almost given up on Ali, suspecting that he had been waylaid and murdered by footpads and was reckoning that in the morning the populace would awake to find us frozen statues, when at last he reappeared, swinging himself along on his thin white pole.

'Prince,' he cried, 'we are in luck. I have persuaded the chamberlain of no less a person than the Earl of Warwick himself to welcome us into his hall where there is a feast already started, food, shelter, warmth and entertainment,'

Well, we all pulled ourselves together, shrugged the snow off our cloaks and stamped our feet. The muleteers stirred our draught animals awake, our fakir came out of his trance, and the Buddhist jingled his finger cymbals and started his monotonous chant.

'In fact,' Ali went on, as we began to make our way up a slight incline, 'we are expected. There have even been men out looking for us.'

'How should this be?'

'Tonight is a special feast. It is called Twelfth Night because it falls twelve nights after the birth of Jesus, whom they call God. It seems that on this night three kings from the Ear East, from India perhaps, came to his birthplace with special gifts. Now. The captain at the gate, who let us in. apparently reported our arrival to the nobles here and likened us to the three kings, both on account of the darkness of our skins and the wealth we appeared to have with us, whereupon Warwick gave orders that we should be found and brought to the hall. And, of course, when I arrived pleading for shelter I was recognised by the captain of the gate as one of the party he had been describing…'

Already we were beneath the walls of the keep or central fortress of the city, close to two of the large temples or churches. The guards let us pass beneath a portcullis, like the one in the city walls, and ushered us into an anteroom or guardroom while they advised our hosts of our arrival. There was a fire and rush-lights, and already things looked better than they had. We could hear music, played on squealing pipes with banging drums, coming across a small courtyard from a hall with high, narrow windows that glowed with the lights within.

Ali went on, 'These three kings.' he said, 'were called Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, and I think it would please them if we represented them as best we can. You, Prince should be Caspar because he came first, I can play Melchior. and Anish should be Balthazar, since he is always represented as a blackamoor and of the three of us Anish's colouring is the darkest.'

Anish was annoyed by this, he does not like to be reminded of his Tamil ancestry, but there was no denying what Ali had said so I told Anish to be quiet and to do as he was told. Ali concluded, 'The gifts they brought were gold, incense and myrrh. We use bdellium from our medicine chest for myrrh, the aroma is similar, and I think we can provide all three. And I shall need something a little richer than my usual garments if I am to be a king…'

He never ceases to surprise me. our Ali. for now he bustled about like a child with a new game to play, getting us into our best clothes with gold chains and so forth, pulling my second-best robe on over his usual turban and cape, neither of which he divested himself of and generally getting us lined up and ready, me with a small gold goblet encrusted with diamonds and rubies, with elephants carved round the rim – I expect you remember it. a nice enough trinket and not at all special – he with a handful of incense sticks, and Anish with a silver box containing a small slab of bdellium, which we had brought with us as a prophylactic against stomach cramps.

Chapter Fifteen

First, let me describe the hall. It was quite large, perhaps as much as fifty good paces long and twenty wide, with a high, pitched roof supported on hammer-beams and corbels. We entered at one end through large double doors (hardwood of the sort they call oak which they use for all timber work where strength is required, though it is nothing like as hard or strong as the woods we use), and were confronted at the other end by a raised dais on which the chief nobles sat, facing the main body of the hall.

This was filled by two long parallel tables at which sat forty or more squires and knights, lesser gentry. In the middle of the wall to our left there was a huge fireplace in which numerous logs were blazing, enough to warm the whole room; on the other side, facing the fire, were doors smaller than the one by which we had entered, which we soon discovered gave access to and from a large kitchen. The whole place was lit with many candles, some fixed to cast-iron wheels suspended horizontally from the ceiling, others in fixtures attached to the walls; nevertheless, the higher beams supporting the roof and the corners remained shadowy and in darkness, a gloom exacerbated by the fact that the place was decorated with branches of evergreens called ivy and holly.

As the night wore on many of the candles died a guttering smoky death, and by midnight almost the only light came from the great fire. However, this did not prevent the carousing and horseplay continuing almost to dawn.

Above us, as we entered, there was an overhanging gallery filled with… I was going to say musicians, but it was scarcely music they produced from their instruments. These were made from brass as trumpets, hunting horns and sackbuts, wood as flutes and a pipe called the hautboy with a reed, which made a nasty squealing noise, and untuned drums, which either gave oft a booming bang or a fierce, grating rattle. Some of the pipes had bladders attached with a second pipe sticking out of them. The bladder was filled with the breath of the piper who then squeezed it forcing air through this second pipe to make a long, monotonous drone.

These musicians welcomed us with a fanfare, and as we walked down the aisle between the two tables all the men stood up and cheered, banging their horn-handled knives on their pewter plates or on the table. Somewhat bemused but sensing that the atmosphere and intentions of all were friendly, I led our procession on towards the dais with as much composure as I could muster and found myself faced with a living picture which I recognised from paintings, stained-glass windows and the like, which we had seen on our way from Venice. It was a presentation, indeed a travesty, of the group they call the holy family – Mary, the mother of Jesus, Joseph, his father, and the newborn Jesus himself, to whom we were to present our gifts.

A travesty indeed. Have I said there were no women at all in this hall? Such was the case, though now I believed for a moment that I was wrong. For, though the figure that portrayed the mother of Jesus was six feet tall and exceedingly well built, he was also dressed in a blue robe with a cowl round whose edge he peeked coyly. Moreover, his fair skin beneath the one lock of auburn hair we could see was smooth and fine, his eyes large, wide and intensely blue: his mouth was painted like a harlot's. Once I realised that this was a man dressed as a woman I could see how two other factors had made the deception momentarily successful: he was young, only seventeen years old, and handsome in a light, winsome way. Behind him stood 'Joseph', an older man, in his thirties, heavily built, strong-looking, and dark in hair, though rubicund in skin colour, but wearing when we first saw him a heavy beard and wig hastily improvised from bits of sheepskin worn woollen side out, with a coarse cloak requisitioned from one of his servants.

Most disturbing of all was the infant Jesus, or rather the creature that stood in for him, carried in the arms of the 'mother'. This was nothing more nor less than a sucking pig, alive, but not struggling, quite content to lie on its back in the crook of the 'mother's' arm, gazing up into the face above it, with every indication of content, save that its snout wrinkled and quested… perhaps for milk?

The hall now fell silent and I did not need the whispered prompting of Ali to treat the show with some seriousness. I approached the group, knelt at the booted feet of the Mary, with the humblest obeisance I could muster, and placed the goblet on the floor. Ali and Anish did likewise, and then, as Anish heaved himself to his feet (for all the privations we have suffered he is no thinner), the whole hall burst into an uproar of laughter and cheers. Possibly this frightened the piglet, which now wriggled convulsively and urinated on 'Mary's' lap. The young man playing the part launched himself to his feet with a bellow, set the piglet scurrying across the floor, aimed a kick at it, which missed. 'Damned creature,' he cried. 'Wasn't he meant to be in swaddling clothes?'

The two men then threw off their borrowed robes and led us to sit at their high table beside them.

'Joseph' acted as host as, indeed, was right since this was Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick and Captain of Calais (pray do not confuse him with the captain of the guard). He is, and he made sure we knew it, a man of great wealth and power, owning great estates throughout the kingdom of Ingerlond through his marriage to a lady who had brought with her dowry the title he bore. He himself is the son and heir of the Earl of Salisbury, an old man, once a great warrior, who also sat at the table. Neville, then and since, showed a certain arrogance in his behaviour, a wilfulness, an unpredictability that we soon learnt was a general characteristic of all the Ingerlonder nobility, though exaggerated in him. His pride was not without justification. We soon learnt that he had distinguished himself militarily, especially at sea, clearing the channel that lies between Ingerlond and Francia of pirates, though he was known to be both impetuous and indecisive as a general on dry land.

The other younger man was introduced to us simply as March. Or Eddie. Eddie March. I understand him to be a person of some consequence, but not a lot, owing his position in the company to his prowess, his good looks and the friendship of Warwick, rather than to any claim to greatness he might have through blood or inherited lands.

Incidentally, and in this as in so much else I am indebted to Ali for tutoring me, the Ingerlonders set enormous store by wealth and parentage, and little to talent or merit. But that is by the way.

Now the charade was over the feasting began. The food was, again, disgusting. There were huge amounts of beef and mutton, too, hacked from a whole sheep that was spitted above the fire. There was a centrepiece of a swan stuffed with a peacock, stuffed with a cockerel, stuffed with larks; many vegetables of the sort we feed only to animals, such as cabbage and various roots; mountains of bread, made from wheat and just about edible, butter, cream and hard, strong cheeses. But there were also preserved or dried fruits, some from warmer lands, such as dates and figs, and nuts, almonds and cobs.

But worst of all was the amount of strong drink, a never-ending supply of ales and wines brought to the table in large ewers by serving-boys, which, of course, soon took their effect. I earlier used the word 'horseplay', which may have puzzled you, but I used it advisedly for it describes accurately a particular sort of foolery almost all now gave themselves up to. When the tables were cleared of most of the feast's debris apart from the goblets and ewers, the younger, lighter men climbed on to the backs of the heavier larger ones who gripped their riders' knees in the crooks of their elbows and carried them in combat against the others, the aim being to 'unhorse' the riders, or bring both riders and mounts crashing to the floor. To this end they used whatever they could find as weapons except real ones. Cushions and pillows were brought into play, ladles and big spoons, even empty and not so empty-jugs and big drinking vessels they call tankards, made out of pewter.

Soon there was blood everywhere, and broken furniture and tableware but no serious injuries that I could see. Once a couple fell or were beaten to the ground they retired to the sides, where they continued to contribute to the noise, if nothing else, by cheering on the survivors. The result was that there was more noise when only two couples were left than there had been at the outset. One pair was made up of Richard Neville with Eddie March on his back, and the other by an old man called William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, riding a younger knight (though still in his forties, I would guess) called John Dynham. Fauconberg, we later learnt, was Warwick's uncle. Until now I had thought the survival of Richard Neville and March was due to Neville's seniority as Earl of Warwick and Captain of Calais and that none durst overturn him, but I was wrong. His uncle, who had a grizzled beard and shoulders as broad as an ox's, managed to get his foot between those of his nephew and with one hard push had him over. Yet it was not just brute force that tumbled him but cunning too, for Fauconberg had seen an upturned chair behind Warwick and that was enough to provide the leverage to trip him.

Warwick did not take kindly to this ruse, though young March laughed it off readily enough. Warwick claimed treachery and trickery on his uncle's part and his face darkened with anger, but he was shouted down by the onlookers who declared Fauconberg and Dynham had won fairly. I had the reeling that many of the young men were glad of an excuse-to belittle their general.

Well, cousin, as I said, the candles burnt low, and most of the men fell by degrees into a drunken stupor though not until they had sung many a maudlin song to the accompaniment of the musicians, mostly about lost loves, or the ladies they worship from afar and long for hopelessly, and one or two about friends slain in battle. Hut even as night wore towards day we were constantly reminded of the barbarity of the people we had come amongst. The stone floor was strewn with rushes and sawdust and this, they seemed to think, gave them licence to urinate and worse against the walls, and the dogs too, of which there were several and all very large, did their business where they wanted. We kept ourselves to ourselves, huddled in a corner near the fire, and dreamt, wrapped in a more complete darkness, of a home we had never perhaps properly appreciated until then.

We were woken quite suddenly, even roughly, shortly after dawn, first by a servant who came and stirred the great lire back into life, adding some kindling and dry logs, then by the general shift and shuffle of men stirring whilst still suffering from the effects of carousing on alcohol. Into all this came the sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobbles outside, challenges and passwords exchanged, and in came three men wearing chain-mail and conical helmets, with broadswords scabbarded at their sides. Their heavy boots rang on the flagstones. They also had plate armour on their arms and legs, but none on their bodies that we could see, though these were concealed by tabards decorated with a white diagonal cross on red, which we later discovered designated them followers of the Neville family.

They strode up the hall and were shortly in animated conversation with the Earl, who had fallen asleep under the high table to which he had returned to nurse his pride and drown his sorrows after the horseplay tournament.

Meanwhile, the grey light from the tall windows slowly spread and filled the great hall, casting its dull light over the mess and ordure left from the night before. I was glad at least to see that some of the boys who had served had reappeared with brushes and brooms to push the filth and debris into piles which they then carried out before strewing the floor with fresh straw and rushes. The to-ing and fro-ing also meant that various doors were left open, including the big ones through which we had entered and the smells and stuffiness were to some extent lifted by gusts of cold, fresh air. These, by the way, presaged a mighty storm of gales and rain that lasted almost a week. Ali hung around on the fringes of activity and was soon able to report back to Anish and me.

'It seems,' he said, 'that a thousand men have gathered in Ingerlond on the outskirts of a small port called Sandwich, barely twenty miles away, across the sea, where they are led by officers of the King. It is expected that they will cross and join the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes as soon as the tides and winds favour them. Our hosts fear that, with this increase in his forces, the stalemate will be broken and Somerset will be able to attack Calais and either capture Warwick and his men or drive them into the sea.'

'If he succeeds our own position will be compromised,^’ Amsh interjected, with some anxiety. 'Somerset will not be pleased to find us still here since the passport he gave us was on condition that we made our way from here up the coast to Bremen."

'Ali,' I commanded, 'go and see if you can find out how Neville is planning to cope with this crisis.'

He was back ten minutes later. 'A John Dynham, he who won the contest on the back of Lord Fauconberg, is to lead a small force to Sandwich, where he hopes to do them some delaying mischief such as burn or steal the fleet of ships there. Apparently he knows the town and harbour and believes this knowledge will enable him to do much damage without too much risk, especially as the main body of the thousand men is camped on the outskirts of the town.'

'If that's the best they can think of,' Anish remarked, 'I don't hold out much hope for their success.' And he went on to say that he thought we should try to get out of Calais before we were caught up in a siege or a battle.

I reminded him that our aim was to get to Ingerlond and find my brother, and our only chance of doing that depended on remaining where we were.

Well, once the storm had blown itself out, this Dynham embarked with three hundred soldiers Neville could hardly spare. He returned a few days later, but before I tell you what the outcome of his expedition was. I must fill in three more matters of some importance that we learnt or happened to us in the interim.

First I asked Ali to find out what he could to add to the knowledge he already had concerning this feud or civil war that seemed to be occupying the lives of all the Ingerlonders. Here is what he told us after a day or two spent questioning the acquaintances he made amongst both the knights and the young men who served the nobles.

Chapter Sixteen

It all goes back,' he said, 'eighty years and more. At that time Ingerlond was ruled by a great warrior king called Edward, who conquered much of Francia and won many great battles against the Franks. He had several sons, the eldest of whom was known as the Black Prince because of the colour of the armour he wore and who was as great a warrior as his father. However, this Black Prince died before his father, and when Edward himself died it was the Black Prince's son. Richard, who came to the throne, following the laws that govern such matters in Ingerlond.

'This Richard was a weak and pleasure-loving youth, who fought no wars against the Franks but stayed at home and lived in luxury with his favourites, wasting the kingdom with his extravagance. Many of the nobles began to hate him for this and eventually chose a leader to oust him, even though this was against the law and religion of the land.

Their rebellion was led by a nephew of Edward called Henry, the son of John, known as John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This Henry thus became king. But many others of the nobles thought he should not be king and his reign was troubled with civil strife. Moreover, he connived at the murder of the ousted Richard. Henry survived and was Succeeded by his son, also a Henry. This second Henry, the fifth King of Ingerlond to bear the name, was another great warrior and returned to Francia where he, too, won many great victories before he died, leaving as his successor a child, hardly more than a baby, to be king in his place. 'This child was also Henry…'

Here Anish intervened with a whining complaint. 'Are these people so short of names they have to give the same name to every king they have?'

I reminded him that Your Excellency's three predecessors were all called Deva Raya, and he shut up.

Ali continued, 'This Henry, the sixth to rule Ingerlond, is still alive and is now nearly forty years old. Like the Richard whose vices were the first cause of all this, he is a bad ruler, not a wastrel living in luxury but spending his revenue on colleges, monasteries and places of learning, all built with great magnificence to the glory of the Christian God. He is also a weakling in mind, body and spirit. He suffers periods of madness, is often ill, and lacks the ability to be decisive or firm. He is of poor judgement. He is ruled, and the whole country through him, by his Frankish wife, Margaret of Anjou, who wastes what is left of the royal revenues on less exalted things than churches and puts favourites whose families are of no consequence in high places. Because the royal coffers are often empty and her followers grasping and incompetent, the government performs ill and general lawlessness has become endemic throughout the land. Many nobles take advantage of this state of anarchy to pursue personal feuds over imagined injuries, or disputes arising from contested claims to property and demesnes.'

He paused, took a turn in front of the fireplace, swinging on his pole, hitching his fur over his shoulder. 'Now,' he went on, once he had collected himself again, 'when the King's madness becomes insupportable and of some duration a regency is formed, of three or four magnates, to rule in his name. And when this happens the Queen is usually one of the three, but another is Richard…'

Anish sighed.

'… Richard. Duke of York. This Richard is descended from a younger brother of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and on that account has no claim to the throne. However, he is also descended in the female line from an older brother of Gaunt, which might give him a claim to the throne better than the present king's. But he has never pushed this claim – at least, not publicly. As I have said, though, he has ruled the country with others during the King's madness. You will have noticed how inbred this family is – hence the high incidence, no doubt, of illness and madness.

'The Queen hates him and suspects his motives and intentions. He himself has proclaimed himself Protector as well as Regent. He has said that the country needs strong government to set all to rights, and that he should lead it. The dispute between them led to open conflict and the magnates and nobility of Ingerlond all sided with one or the other. At first this Richard of York gained the upper hand, made the King his prisoner and ruled in his place, but then the Queen won a battle and reversed the situation. At present the Queen rules, with the King by her side, from a city called Coventry in the middle of Ingerlond, not from London where the merchants generally favour Richard of York. York himself is in exile in Ireland, while, as you see, his cousin, friend and ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, maintains himself here in his support.'

Thus Ali ben Quatar Mayeen. Now I must close, dear cousin, with an account of the two other significant matters that have taken place during the last few days.

One afternoon, just after the storm had blown itself out and Dynham had sailed for Sandwich with his three hundred men, I, Anish and Ali were taking a turn round the courtyard of the keep. We were not alone. In one corner our fakir was entertaining a cloud of urchins with six-hall juggling and in another our monk was passing an hour or so in the lotus position or whatever.

We were conversing about our situation. Were we prisoners or guests? Would Neville and his Yorkists aid or hinder our crossing into Ingerlond? Were our tradeable goods safe or would he simply confiscate them and turn them into commodities lie could use for his enterprise of taking one king from the throne and putting another in his place? Certainly it was a constant complaint amongst his affinity that funds were low; none had yet been paid their hire as liveried gentlemen in his service while the best they could hope for, if their enterprise failed, was a life spent wandering the continent and even the Orient, plying for hire as mercenaries… for in Ingerlond they were already attainted.

We asked what this meant and certainly it seemed an unpleasant fate for anyone to suffer. First a bill of Attainder had been passed against them by Act of Parliament (of which more later if it becomes important). This meant that the King had legally seized all their lands, movables and money, disinherited their families and, if they fell into his hands, could have them hanged, drawn and quartered.

This is a most barbarous form of execution and goes far beyond the foulest things even the Arabs have dreamt up -far beyond, for instance, impaling. First, the criminal is hanged by the neck, but not for long enough to kill him. Then he is laid on a table and the executioner draws out of his body his inner organs, particularly his intestine which he holds before his victim's eyes. Finally the heart and liver are plucked out. The poor man will now probably die after a process that will have lasted up to a full half-hour and the executioner will cut off his head and cut his carcass into four quarters. These will then be displayed separately at points some distance from each other, as at the gates of a city or over a bridge, as a warning to whomever might see them.

Now, following a battle they had lost, through treachery, at a town called Ludlow, a couple of months earlier, all the nobles and gentry in Calais and the exiles in Ireland had been attainted by Parliament. Their lands in Ingerlond were confiscated, their families reduced to poverty. So, all we met and talked to during our stay in Calais were impoverished and thus open to temptation to steal from us.

However, this they did not do, but one at least came at us another way. As I say, we were walking round the yard and had just passed the stables when a tall figure who had been grooming a big black stallion came out to us, wiping his hands on a cloth. Now that he was in full daylight (so-called, but still damp and grey) we recognised him as Eddie March. He came straight to the point. 'Prince’ he said, 'you are on your way to Ingerlond, seeking your lost brother.'

Ali translated for me, though I had already picked up the gist. I assented.

'You will need a guide.'

At this Ali bridled somewhat. 'I can find our way around,' he muttered, but March pressed on.

'I should like to present myself to you in that capacity. I have been in most parts of the kingdom and I have friends who will help you in your search and provide us with lodging. Quite often, out of friendship for me, they will not charge you."

I looked him up and down. He was certainly a well set-up lad, with shoulders definitely broad even though the fashion of padded, fluted upper sleeves exaggerated the effect, with a narrow waist clipped in by a tight belt on which he wore a small dagger. On his lower half he wore tight woollen hose, which revealed well-shaped muscular thighs and when he turned, lean, hard buttocks. His expression was open and pleasing, and his features regular. He smiled often. His voice was mellifluous too, but fittingly strong. I looked at the rest of my entourage: Ali, like a cross between Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea; Anish, plump and wheezy, and, since we had arrived in Calais, always with a drop of watery phlegm on the end of his pointed, drooping nose. And both of them elderly. With no soldiers we would be in poor shape if attacked by footpads.

'It is kind of you to offer your services,' I said, and made a slight bow. 'We are happy to accept them.'

'There is just one thing,' March now added, with some confusion in his face, a heightening of colour. 'I have no chinks at the moment, dead out of funds.'

His speech, perhaps out of embarrassment, had become clipped and formal.

'I shall pay you, of course.'

‘I would not dream of hiring myself out as a paid hand. However, a small loan… I do have prospects, you know.'

'Say no more. Anish here will provide you with whatever you think you need.'

And so, with little more ado, we settled on arrangements, and fixed a day, a week from now, for our departure. I looked up at the sky, wishing to bring to an end an interview that I guessed March might find embarrassing if it were continued in front of his companions.

'It looks like rain. Again.’ Anish does not like to be caught in the rain. ‘And you will want to finish grooming your master's horse.'

As we went indoors Anish grumbled that March would probably make the loan to which we had committed ourselves far too large, while Ali muttered that I had made a silly mistake: the stallion belonged to March himself. He might lack a servant to look after it for him, but he owned a horse fit for a king. Both of them were right.

The second notable event was the return of Sir John Dynham and his three hundred men. His expedition had been successful. Knowing the harbour of Sandwich, where the commanders of the King's or Queen's men would be lodged, and the narrow streets of fishermen's cottages and ships' suppliers around, he had contrived to surprise and capture all who were within the town of the King's people without alerting the main body who were camped in the fields a quarter of a mile away.

The commanders of the captured men were a certain Richard Wydville. Lord Rivers, his wife who had been born a princess, married a duke, and now was married to this Wydville-Rivers, and their twenty-year-old son. Anthony. Warwick decided to put on a show to humiliate these people, whose commission had been his arrest or death and who had been so ignominiously dragged from their beds and shipped across the Channel. He lit the hall with a hundred and sixty torches as well as many hundred candles, celebrating, he said the Feast of Candlemas and the Purification of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Odd. I thought she was meant to be pure already. We fought our way through another huge meal, which was not, this time, quite so awful since there was spit-roast wild boar, and sweet puddings called syllabubs made from soured cream and honey which, with a little of our nutmeg, were quite palatable.

When the tables were cleared Warwick called for these Wydvilles to be brought before him and, old and dignified though the father was, began to berate him. Apparently Dynham had reported to him that Richard Wydville had behaved arrogantly since his humiliating capture, calling the lords in Calais arrant traitors and worse. But it was Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, much the same age as Wydville, who began.

'Just who do you bloody think you are?' he shouted, using the clipped form of speaking which I have already noted is typical of the Ingerlonder nobility when they are crossed. Normally they drawl, in a lazy way, dragging out vowels and dropping consonants. 'Just where do you think you get off calling us traitors? We are the King's men, you know. It's from you people and your pernicious influence that we aim to free the poor man. It will be your lot to end up on the scaffold as traitors… mark my words.'

Lord Rivers withstood this onslaught with, as I have said, some dignity, not to say continued arrogance. His son, too, contrived a superior sneer, though he said nothing. This infuriated Salisbury's son Warwick.

'Just recall, my good man, who you are dealing with and where you came from. It may be forty years have gone since you were pushing a plough, caught my lady's eye and grubbed a coronet for yourself out of the ditch, but you still carry the smell of the farmyard with you.'

At this the young Wydville flared up. 'My father is a gentleman, born and bred, and that is all an Inglyssheman need be to command the same respect as a king. And if you give me back my sword I'll prove it so on any in this hall.'

At which our Eddie March joined in. 'I don't think so. When all's said and done there are those here in whose veins runs the blood royal. Such men do not fight with yeomen.'

And there was an end of it. Cousin. I tell this story only to illustrate to you the strange customs of this Inglysshe tribe. All the nobility.ire descended, sometimes admittedly only in the female line, from the Norman barbarians who conquered the land four hundred years ago and it is a matter of pride in them that their blood is untainted, at least in the male line, with that of the ancient Inglysshe whose land they seized and on whom they look down, considering them boors, churls, uncivilised brutes. But, in truth, these nobles show little in their behaviour that you or I would readily call civilised.

Well, cousin, it is time I brought this letter to an end. All you really need to know is that we are making some progress in the tasks we set ourselves, that we shall be sailing for Ingerlond just as soon as the wind is fair, and that in Eddie March we have a guide who will look after us.

I shall not take up my pen again until we are in Ingerlond and have achieved some of what we are here for.

I remain, dear cousin,

Your devoted servant, Harihara

Chapter Seventeen

It was a relief, you can imagine, to return to Ali's house a day or so later and find him recovered and sitting at his usual place. I had no wish to find another sheaf of papers waiting for me filled with the fustian Prince Harihara had written. I mean, could you follow all that stuff about Edwards, Richards and Henrys? Did you feel the need to?

Yes, Ali was there. But he was not alone. Beside him sat a startlingly beautiful lady, some thirty or thirty-five years old. She was, I suppose, on that cusp of perfection that mature women achieve when they have seen much, done much, have had children, and either out of strength of character alone or character combined with widowhood have achieved control of their own lives.

She was dressed in a bolero and full trousers made from rich embroidered silks, which were yet almost transparent in their fineness. In the gap between these garments her navel, filled with a substantial diamond, was exposed in the centre of a rounded but unblemished belly. A shawl covered her shoulders and head, which she held high, always with pride. Her high broad forehead was framed by rich dark hair, large dark eyes glowed with humour and sometimes malice beneath full eyebrows, her nose was sculpted and slightly aquiline with a smaller diamond in the side of her right nostril; her full lips were painted a deep crimson above a small but strong chin and a long neck. A pair of creases in the latter, just above her collar-bones, were the only physical signs of her maturity apart from her dignity, humour and self-possession, She wore a lot of jewellery, gold bangles on her upper arms,

rings entrusted with emeralds and rubies, anklets and so forth. An invisible miasma of perfume hung about her and shifted in tone when she moved.

'Mah-Lo. effendi, I should like you to meet the lady lima. Uma, this is Mah-Lo. I have told you about him.'

My bow expressed, I hope, some of the reverence and wonder I felt. The goddess in front of me placed her palms together in front of her creamy bosom, which her bolero, cut low, scarcely hid at all, and gently inclined her head above her pointed fingertips. The eyes that looked up at me were watchful, calculating and seductive.

I sat beside her with my hands on my knees. She picked up my right hand and placed it on the table between us, keeping it covered with hers, and murmured that it was a pleasure to meet me, or some such greeting.

Uma, you know, has figured in my history,' Ali continued. 'As a vision, a promise, a sort of consummation – you recall how we bathed together in the Caliph's palace in Misr-al-Kahira – and, of course, disguised as a Buddhist monk. She is also the aunt of my two wives.' He took a date from the silver bowl that stood by the lemonade jug, popped it in his mouth, discreetly removed the stone in his palm, chewed, swallowed and went on. 'Sow, there are parts of our story which she can tell better than I since she was present at important times and I was not. In any case what happened to her and the things she caused to happen have their own intrinsic interest. So she has very kindly agreed to share some of her afternoons with us…"

He passed his good hand over the empty socket of his missing eye and sighed. 'Uma. You may as well start,' he murmured.

Uma withdrew her hand from mine, sat upright. 'Very well,' she said. She took a sip of lemonade and closed her eyes. For a moment the garden seemed still, almost as if with her it held its breath, though I suppose I fancied this. No doubt the fountain continued to play and the birds sang.

Then she began.

Sea-wrack and spume, sail-crack and whistle, heaving brown water swinging like a mother's soothing hand against the rough, seaweed-festooned stones of the pier. The blow of the wind round my midriff as. head down, I clutch my outer cloak about me – they must not see my rounded breasts, my steepled nipples. Well, that's what they feel like in this wind.

There's quite a gang of us, a caterpillar almost for legs and cohesion, inching along a bent stick towards the tightly moored vessel, held snug against hempen bolsters by hawsers as thick as my arm, in spite of the lash and whip-slash of wind.

Looking back above their heads I see the spires and towers of Calais, the tumbled roofs of thatch and slate, the smoke shredded down the alleyways of air between the chimneys, and the rainclouds bustling across the sky above them. Prince Harihara Kaya Kurteishi, a purple velvet cap trimmed with gold braid pulled over his glossy black locks and tied with a red silk scarf below his chin to hold it on, his plump dark lace screwed up against the wind which I know he hates, black sable tins as glossy furs his hair, and soft leather boots also fur-trimmed; Chamberlain Anish. eyes red-rimmed, moving with exaggerated care lest he slip on the sea-slimed cobbles, his elbow held by Ali ben Quatar Mayeen here the Lady Uma offered a warm smile to our host. who's in a muddle trying to keep his turban on, hold his stick and support Anish all at the same time, and with one hand not as functional as it should be, yet he finds time to peer around him with his one good eye, ever curious, ever seeking out the strange, the new. Then our fakir, with wild hedgehog hair, muttering arcane spells and mantras into his pointed beard or scolding the ten-year-old lad who carries his box of tricks for him. Last, or rather not last because our baggage train follows him, Eddie March, clanking and jingling with his accoutrements and leading by a bridle trimmed with scalloped purple hessian his high-stepping stallion with its balls like giant plums. This Ingerlonder is the only one of our party I've yet to fuck with, but I shall, I shall, and each of the rest thinks he's the only one who knows my breasts, my buttocks and my crimson quim.

Then there's the mules, only twelve left now, so much of the goods we brought with us have been spent, and six out of our original ten muleteers. Anish sent the dhobi-wallahs, the cooks and all but two of the secretaries home with our soldiers. He said they were too expensive to keep.

I turn away and look now across the sweep of the harbour, the forest of masts in front of warehouses, and quays stacked with bales of wool and casks of wine. I breathe in and the sharp air stings my questing nostrils: it's laden with smells, of tar and rope and timber, of fish and vinegar, of sea and all the smells of sea, the rotten sweetness of old fish offal, and salt and seaweed, rats' breath and urine, bleached wood and the bones of drowned sailors, and the cleansing ozone, which seems to carry the tang of semen freshly milked.

And then the farmyard smell, mingled with all the spices and perfumes of India, as the mules clop by and one dumps yellow turds at my feet. They won't be coming on the ship, we'll have to hire or buy another lot in Dover, but the sacks and bags are all to be humped on board.

I love departures, arrivals too and today we shall have both, the latter either in Dover where the burghers favour the men of York, or in the bosom of the deep.

Although this is the shortest by far of our sea trips the boat is the largest, a great big three-masted tub, fat within hooped staves, like a barrel on its side. There are several of these freighters in the harbour, carvels they are called, built to carry wool out of Ingerlond, and coal and pig-lead, firewood, ironware and cheap tin trays, then back they come with furs and silks, German armour, French and German wine, and all the precious things merchants like Ali have always traded from east to west, but mainly, the Ingerlonders being as they are. wine.

Because the hull bellies out, the gangway from the quay is eight feet long and quite wide, with roped sides and rungs nailed across the planks to stop us from slipping. First the muleteers unload the mules and carry our baggage below, stowing it in the hold, but now it is the turn of March's stallion, which is called Genet. Genet will not cross the gangway. A sweat breaks out on his shoulders, enough to froth in the wind. He arches his neck and rolls his eyes so you can see the whites. He neighs, almost bellows, like a trumpet, rears up then lashes out with his hoofs, whose clattering metal shoes strike-sparks from the granite flags. He gives off a hot, ferric smell, like a thunderbolt. It takes two of the muleteers to hold him and even then he contrives to bite one on the shoulder so blood streams down his back.

Eddie March strides forward, his face black with rage, and taking a long whip from the chief muleteer, which he holds so the long thong is looped up against the shaft, he beats the animal about the face and neck until he backs away, head down and cowed, but as soon as they lead him forward towards the gangplank, he rears up again and almost breaks loose. I can see March will beat him again, and since he is a noble animal this distresses me. I move forward. 'Let me,' I say, 'let me.'

'Get back, boy. He'll chew you and spit you out.' Spoken in that lazy drawl these Ingerlonder nobles use when they want to make you feel small, or assert their superiority.

'I think not.'

And I take the bridle, close up to Genet's cheek, and standing on tiptoe begin to murmur then croon in his flattened ear, which presently he pricks. With my free hand I stroke and soothe his quivering flank. His close-cropped hair is as smooth as silk one-way, rough as shark's skin the other. I can feel the dampness of his sweat, smell the fodder on his breath and peer into his flared scarlet nostrils. I sense his power, first shimmering across the surface of his skin, then, as he recognises my kindness, receding like a tide into his innermost organs. His eyes narrow a little, no longer flashing white, and become pools of deepest amber and jet again beneath fringed curtains of eyelashes I might die for. With my free hand I find in a pocket beneath my cloak three sugared almonds I had forgotten I had, and I let his hot, wet lips scoop them from my open palm, and now, it's fair to say, he's mine for ever.

I station myself a little in front of his left shoulder and he turns and bends his neck so his cheek pushes against mine as I let him, with only the slightest prompting of the bridle, lead me across the booming gangplank and down a ramp to the stall that has been prepared for him below.

As I fasten the half-door behind him I hear the clink of Eddie March's ironware. He is not, I think, too pleased: perhaps he has lost a little face. At all events, with a heavy hand and a grip like a blacksmith's tongs, he catches my shoulder, spins me, pushes my stomach up against the gate and hauls up my cloak and robe.

'You spoil a brute to treat him like that,' he growls. 'How will he carry me into battle if he does not fear me more than arrows, gunpowder and shot?'

'He'll carry you to hell and back if he loves you,' I answer.

Coming on deck five minutes later, after his attempted buggery, I find the crew are already hauling and spreading the square mainsail down from its yardarm, against which it was furled, and dragging up the lateen, both of which now belly and swell, pregnant with the future. Whether or not he discovered my sex I am still unsure. Perhaps he did and it was the surprise that made him come prematurely deep in my natal cleft but not actually up my rectum. Though I don't know. I suspect these Ingerlonders take little more account of fucking, both in the time they are prepared to devote to it and in the pleasure they get from it, than they do of pissing. Less, considering how much beer they drink. Well, we shall see.

Soon we are out and briefly we can see white cliffs both in front and behind, lining both horizons, but then the wind shifts and drops a little allowing the racing clouds to slow down enough to sink like a lover upon the sea, grey-green now that we have passed the harbour bar, and shed a driving mist of tiny drops, as cold as ice, that sweep into my face and down my throat. How I love these swift changes in the weather! If they were all we had discovered in the way of new sensations, they would be enough to justify this trip, make all worthwhile. Almost I pull off my cloak, step out of my robe and let the rain sweep over me, cleansing and stinging, caressing and tingling. Certainly, considering what milord has left behind, my buttocks and thighs would benefit from the sluicing. But circumspection is required, if only to ensure the continued stream of sensation I seek, and imagination, anyway, is free and carries no penalties.

The big boat wallows on, heaving and reaching, slipping and dumping, and, right out in the middle, even dipping its prow with the sprit in front of it into the rollers and scooping them over the forecastle and main deck, much in the way an elephant in the Krishna back home will sluice itself with river water. Now I am dizzy with the motion and even my stomach heaves a little, but it is all sensation, sensation that tells you, you are alive. Above us the seagulls cry, holding station with barely a shift of their wings above the lateen, and out on the right-hand side we see a school of humpbacks blow then fluke when a pair of black and white masked killers get amongst them.

I want the most, the most I can have at any given moment; indeed, that is why I am here, why I have come on this trip, so I may experience the most powerful sensations the world can offer and thereby discover the goddess within me. I climb the four or five steps on to the foredeck and, clutching rails and ropes, heave myself forward into the pounding spray, take it stinging on my face, plastering my robes against my breasts, my belly and my thighs, while the wind from behind shrieks by beneath the mainsail. Riding thus I begin to see looming up through mist, spray and rain those great white cliffs, so much higher and nobler than the ones we have left behind. Then, nearer still. I can make out the choughs circling their nests and hear above the wave-crash their shrill mewing. And now I feel him again behind me, shielding my back from the wind, the warmth and pressure of his chest against my back and, yes, again his prick above my buttocks, as hard and long, it seems, as that of his stallion stalled below.

His big hands clasp my waist then slide upwards and forwards and close upon my breasts and I hear his sigh in my ear, a sigh of satisfaction, for he knows me now for what I am, a woman.

One word breathes in my ear.

'Albion!'

Although I say nothing he senses the question in the way I lean back into him and raise my head so my temple rests against his neck.

'Albion,' he says again, stooping a little so I can feel his lips in my ear. 'Albion, my new-found land.'

For a moment I think he is talking to me or about me, finding a name for me. but glancing up I can see his young eyes are on the cliffs. 'One day.' he cries. 'I shall be… King… King of the World.'

And he squeezes my tits so I want to cry out.

At this moment I am saved further pain or embarrassment as the master and crew luff the boat, her sails crack and shake, the timbers creak and the full blast of the rain hits our faces. Then round she comes and the claws of the harbour moles open up before us to welcome us in. To Ingerlond, Engelond. Albion.

Chapter Eighteen

london!

After all we do not properly disembark at Dover, but remain moored on the quay while March talks to the burghers who pronounce themselves friends of the Nevilles and York. However, they fear the King's or rather, the Queen's wrath if she learns they have given Yorkists hospitality or even allowed them to land. With the Bill of Attainder passed against all who had supported York it would be an act of treason to do so, punishable with death, confiscation of goods and the rest. Why not, they say, go by boat to London where all the important people are Yorkists and who can, if need be, look after themselves? So, it is decided next day if the wind stays fair, we'll sail round the corner of Albion and up the river to London, and that is what we do, though it takes us a day, a night and a day to make the trip.

Meanwhile the customs and excise officers make a brief examination of our spices, charge us the import tax but bribed by March with Harihara’s gold, ignore the smaller packets of treasure that are secreted amongst the rest. They fix seals to the bags declaring all dues paid, and give us penned receipts as well. Thus we are free to make our way to London with no fear of further molestation by the servants of the Crown.

By river is surely the best way to arrive at an inland port. The long, slow dusk of English winter, which began as soon as the sun had passed its low zenith, marks out with gathering gloom our slow progress on the tide, virtually unassisted save by the lightest of airs out of the north-east. Any coast as it slips by is an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid or savage, and always mute, with an air of whispering. Come and find out. This one is almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. Behind us the sea and sky are seamlessly welded together and in the luminous space the tanned sails drifting up with the tide behind us seem to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished spars. A haze rests on the low shores that run out to sea in vanishing flatness. Ahead the air is dark above Gravesend, and further inland seems condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding over the biggest and the greatest town in Ingerlond.

This time my companion on the forecastle is the ship's boy, a twelve-year-old with a twisted arm caused, so he says, by a break that did not mend properly when he fell from the yardarm of his first ship. Although he has the dark skin of an Arab, he is a Londoner, or near enough, from Deptford, a village on the south bank, and he names for me each place of note as we idle by.

At first we can hardly see the land, which lies low and flat a couple of miles away on either side, but slowly both banks inch in towards us and the great river begins to meander the way rivers do, and the villages we pass become more frequent: Gravesend and Tilbury, Greenhithe and Purfleet, Thamesmead and Creekmouth. The traflic increases too, or seems to, as the space it can move in slowly narrows: carvels like ours, some from distant parts, smaller cogs, flat-bottomed wherries, fishing-boats trailing nets, skiffs and tiny coracles.

Lord Djym – that is his name or nickname for he surely is no real lord – points out to me men and women who swing their way across the mudflats on wooden plates for shoes to gather oysters, scallops, clams and mussels wherever a turn of the river makes a bank of shingle the tide will soon cover, while in the mouths of the smaller streams that empty into the mighty one others cut reeds with billhooks to make roofing thatch. We see slipways, too, and sheds where boats are built, and sawmills powered by the water of the inland streams. Although it is the depths of winter, and we can see snow lying on the hills behind Woolwich and Greenwich, there is bustle and business almost everywhere, except on Bugsby Marsh to our left, an evil, cursed patch caught in a loop of the river where blue flames flicker above outlets of poisonous air.

And then, suddenly, an unnatural darkness tails on us, and the sun, which had shone wanly but low and bright enough to make me want to shade my eyes with my hand, becomes a red disc floating in a pool of blackness.

'What's happened?' I ask, thinking perhaps some sort of eclipse or heavenly intervention is marking our arrival.

Lord Djym is puzzled. 'Nothing.'

'But it's all gone dark, and the sun is almost blotted out.'

'Oh, that's just the smoke from the city. In winter, and especially when it's cold and frosty and there's not much wind, it lies like a blanket over everything. Sometimes it comes down so heavy you can't see your hand in front of your face at midday.'

Slowly, very slowly, we edge round a tongue of land this time on the right bank. It's flat and looks marshy apart from heaps and heaps of smouldering rubbish whose fumes must make up much of the cloud that hangs above and around us. The smell is overpowering, sickening, because amongst it all there is much rotting flesh and much of it is burning.

'The Isle of Dogs," says Lord Djym, and cups his ear towards it. Indeed now I can hear a monotonous howling and barking, and just make out through the gloom the shapes of diseased, emaciated canines loping along the strand and barking at us, or nosing and digging in the piles of waste and garbage.

The river turns again and now is almost straight for a couple of miles or so with the sun about setting above it. Beneath the swirling fog, the surface runs red, not solidly so but splashed in zigzagging lines where the light catches the crests of the ripples, as if a dagger has been slashed finely but closely across its velvet skin and made it bleed. Soon, looming through the smoke and fog on the right-hand side, we can see four big square towers, capped with pyramids of black slate or lead, heavy against the sky, behind a battlemented curtain wall that snakes round them over a low hill. Behind these towers soars the tall, elegant spire that has been on our horizon but getting ever nearer through most of the day.

'Tower of London,' says Djym. 'And St Paul's.'

And that's as far as we go tonight, for the ship's master lays us alongside a wharf on the southern bank, and March calls us into the waist of the boat around the main mast.

'We stay on board tonight,' he says, his voice loud and firm. 'It's not safe to walk through the city streets at night without a guard, and it is too late to find a proper lodging. We shall be up early in the morning and we'll decide on our next move then."

The sun dips below what looks like a line of houses upstream of the towers, or Tower, and suddenly all is dark except for the glimmer of a torch one of the crew is holding. Dim lights glow in casements along the riverbank on the other side, more numerous than the few stars that are bright enough to prick the mantle above. The blood has gone from the river, but fills the western sky instead.

The morning is another of those magic mornings like the one we had the day we arrived in Calais. The sky is perfectly clear, a pale-azure not the lapis blue of the dawn sky in Vijayanagara, but more like an aquamarine. Smoke, white from wood and black from coal, climbs into it in perfectly straight lines from ten thousand chimneys – it looks like the warp on a weaving frame. Frost glitters on every shingled roof and coats the slates and tiles like ground glass. No thatch: within the walls it's forbidden, Djym tells me, for fear of fire. Shadows long and deep fill the spaces between the houses with purple darkness. Most marvellous of all, every rope and spar on our boat and on all the others moored nearby is coated with tiny sharp crystals.

For a moment there is stillness, then downriver, the sun pushes an edge above the water, fills the sky above with gold, and makes the river, too, run with gold where the night before it ran with blood, and at that moment the city comes to life: church bells ring, cocks crow, a cannon cracks on the battlements of the Tower and a puffball of white smoke hangs like a fist for almost a minute above the water – so still is the air. The river begins to till with boats that ply as ferries, for the most part carrying goods and people from the south bank to the north. Vendors appear on the quay beside us. selling bread hot from the ovens, filled with melting cheese and the crisp, smoked and salted porkmeat they call bacon, and canteens tilled with hot spiced red wine. This is welcomed by the men for, as March says, coming to stand beside me: 'Cold, ain't it? Bloody cold.' then, 'Get brekkers out of the way first, then we'll have to organise some animals here for your baggage. Shouldn't be a problem. There's an inn a couple of streets away called the Tabard where pilgrims heading for Canterbury meet. But the pilgrim season don't get under way until April, so I reckon they'll have spare beasts.'

He throws what is left of his pint of wine down his throat, buys a second lump of bread, and saunters off down an alleyway, whose cave-like shadows quickly swallow him up.

But as he goes a strange thing happens. On the corner of the alley he tosses a copper to a legless beggar whose sawn-off stumps rest on the cobbles. This beggar looks after him, watery eyes narrowed, then blinks the rheum out of them, staring still at March's retreating back, shakes his shaggy head. 'Fuck me,' he says. He grabs his crutches and. with remarkable agility, hoists himself into the air above them and swings himself like a tall bird, a heron or a crane, first one stick then the other, along the quay, upstream.

One by one the others come on deck and I repeat to them what March has said while they, too, buy food and drink, though they refuse the hot wine and take warm milk instead. Then Ali makes our porters bring the baggage up from the hold. The ship's master insists it stay on board until he has been paid and Prince Harihara, not knowing what would be a fair price for our voyage from Calais, agrees to leave it on the deck until March returns. Which he does, about an hour later, by when the sun is higher in the sky, though not much – so low is its trajectory in these climes.

It's all bustle now for twenty minutes or so, getting the mules he-has brought with him loaded up, together with two Ingerlonder muleteers, the ship's captain paid, and so on. Then all at last is ready, and I say goodbye to Djym, who surprises me with a kiss. The last to leave is Genet who, for a horse, is quite intelligent and. perceiving he is to be returned to dry land, gives no trouble. One of March's grooms saddles him up yet March does not mount him, but leads him by the bridle. Perhaps he sees the question on my face.

'Don't do to be conspicuous,' he says. 'Although I have many friends in London, I have enemies too.'

This puts me in mind of the legless beggar, who, I now believe, recognised March and I tell him about it. His face clouds, he pulls his lower lip, then goes to the mule where his own personal baggage is stowed, and, undoing a strap here and a strap there, pulls free a scabbarded broadsword, two-handed, all of four feet long, and buckles it to Genet's saddle. Then he turns to Ali. 'Ali,' he says, 'if you lose me or lose your way, ask for the house of Alderman Roger Dawtrey off East Cheap, can you remember that?'

Ali nods.

'He's expecting you and will look after you.'

And so at last we set off, March leading Genet, Ali at his side, and the rest of us following with the mules in the rear. Many of our spice sacks have already been sold so now the Prince's crossbows account for nearly half of them.

A couple of hundred yards and we reach what, the night before, I had taken to be a line of houses marking a bend in the river beyond the Tower, but which now reveals itself to be a bridge, the only bridge for many miles across the Thames. It has big stone gateways at either end, a church in the middle and both sides are lined with houses, with shops on the lower floor opening on to the crossing.

But before we can enter or use this bridge we have to take our turn in a long line of traders, local gardeners and fanners coming to the markets with flocks of sheep, cartloads of cabbages, herds of steers and heifers, pigs and fowl, and now, like it or not, while we wait, we cannot escape the horrors attached to the stone lintel above the gate. For a moment the unwary traveller wonders: why should the sides of several clumsily slaughtered pigs be transfixed with pikes, hoisted and left for the crows and kites, of which there are many, to squabble over? And then it dawns on one that these are not the remains of beasts but of men, and possibly women.

March himself pauses, almost as we pass under these horrors, and looks up, shading his eyes against the glare of the still luminous sky, and I see him shake his head and bite his thumb. I le turns to Ali and since I am right behind him I hear most of what he says. 'These are not criminals. The man on the left is Sir John Thin – he changed sides at the battle of More Heath and joined my lord of Salisbury.'

At this moment a fork-tailed kite flies off with offal in its beak, is attacked by a black crow, and drops the offal into the crowd. It lands on a costermonger's shoulder. The man brushes it off and, with much laughter from him and his friends around him, kicks it into the gutter, for a moment March eyes his sword, hung from the pommel of his saddle, but restrains himself – which is just as well since one thing I already know about him is that he has a temper. As we pass the offal, a thin cat is already sniffing and dabbing with its paw, and I realise it is a kidney, and quite like a porker's since the build of this Sir John belied his second name.

'What ecstasy these men must have suffered,' I murmur to myself, 'for being men of honour and courage they would not have surrendered to fear or howled with pain..’

Chapter Nineteen

I have a man here says you are Edward March. Is that so?' We've come off the bridge which, on account of the forty or so shops on each side, whose stalls and wares spilled out and obstructed easy movement, took all of twenty minutes, and are now to turn left up an alley called Crooked Lane. In front of us is a tall man, dressed in rich crimson velvet, with a black hat and red beard above a heavy gold chain with an enamelled disc on his chest. He's holding a carved stave with a silver ornament on top, and behind him is a small posse of armed men. They wear helmets with the front rim turned up, breastplates, mail, spears, swords, and the three bowmen among them have their bows strung and arrows in place, ready to let loose. At that range one of those could go right through my chest and pin me to Ali who is behind me. I shiver at the thought but feel excited, aroused too. Next to this official is the legless beggar with his crutches.

Eddie looks the official in the eye. 'And what are you that gives you the right to question traders come from the east on lawful business to sell and buy?'

'My staff and badge say who I am. I am Alderman Thomas Gilpin, sheriff of Bridge Ward, and one of my duties is to arrest known miscreants and traitors who come across the bridge. Whatever these people with you might be is no concern of mine, but you, March, are no traveller from the East, but a man attainted by Act of Parliament, and I must ask you to surrender your sword and come with me.'

March looks round him now and behind, so I can see the smile, a grin, really, that is playing on his lips, though his eyes are narrowed in a calculating way. I follow his gaze and see that many of the crowd gathering round us are looking restless, eager. Those who are armed loosen their weapons in their scabbards, and one man’s hastily buying eggs from a passing pedlar woman's basket. Eddie raises his voice and shouts, in a strong voice from his deep chest. 'Who here would see a man of York, a loyal subject of King Harry, taken from you and put in gaol?" And with one quick movement he hoists himself into Genet's saddle and with a flourish draws his sword.

'Not I,' says the man who has been buying eggs and he manages to throw three, two of which hit the sheriff as the rest of the crowd close in round the men before they can draw their weapons. The bowmen, though, loose their arrows into the air above our heads. They mean no harm but to frighten us. However, one hits a woman at an upstairs window in the shoulder. The spurt of her blood and her raucous scream madden the crowd and they surge forward, led by Eddie who makes a pass or two at the armed men then raises his sword to decapitate one who has slipped on the skin of a black plantain.

'Steady on, milord!' cries the man, looking up from the greasy cobbles. 'I meant your worship no harm, I swear.'

Eddie puts the point of his sword on the man's breastplate and pushes him on to his back. Then urging Genet on and waving his weapon above his head he charges on up Bridge Street, tipping over a fish stall spilling silver flounders beneath the feet of the crowd.

Led by one of the muleteers, who seems to know where we are going, we dodge into Crooked Lane, take a right up St Michael's and so come on to the western end of East Cheap where we see Eddie, still riding Genet and waving his sword above his head, coming towards us at a brisk trot, which sends the passers-by scuttling out of his way. No sign now of the sheriff.

He sheathes his sword, grins at us all broadly, high on his little adventure, swings a leg over the pommel and drops to the ground in front of me. He then scandalises all who still believe me to be some sort of eastern monk, and a male at that, by kissing me warmly, in much the way Lord Djym did, firmly on my lips; with one arm round my waist he pulls me close so I can feel the coldness of his iron sleeves.

'That was fun,' he says. 'I enjoyed that.'

I am left with three perceptions. One, I also enjoyed it all; two, this Eddie March, for all his arrogance and fine airs, is still a lad; three, a sense of deja vu, as if I have been here before, will be here again, almost as if, in the previous ten minutes, I have been living a cliché. But I push this aside: it is, after all, a feeling to which we can all be subject when disoriented and tired. And then I notice Eddie has not come through his adventure unscathed: the lower part of his left arm, below the armour, is gashed and bleeding quite heavily.

'I am not,' he sighs, many hours later, 'able, I think, to do what I most want to do at this moment. Though the spirit is more than willing, my flesh has been so weakened by this damned cut…' and his right hand passes across his bare chest, smooth like marble though rippled with bone and muscle, and almost as free of hair as marble, to touch the swathe of bandages on the other side.

I am lying on my side, supported on my elbow above him. For a moment I allow my free hand to wander slowly over his chest and across his stomach. He flinches and the skin beneath my palm shrinks a little. 'That tickles.'

I reach across him, take hold of his wrist, which is strong, hard, bony, and pull his arm back, slide my hand up to his, lift his fingers, smell his fingertips and suck them gently. They smell of the sea and taste of oysters stewed in honey. I lick his palm, lift my upper thigh a touch and put his hand back where it had been.

'Could be,' I say, 'that you drank and ate too much.'

Indeed, Alderman and Mistress Dawtrey's hospitality had been royally generous, better than anything we had experienced since leaving the Caliph's palace in Misr-al-Kahira. Their house, just a few yards up East Cheap on the corner of St Clement's Lane, was a big three-storeyed building, double-roofed and gabled, timber-framed, with red tiles on top. The Alderman and his wife were in the front doorway waiting to welcome us and there I received the third and fourth kisses of the day (there were many more yet to come), full on the lips, which I now understood is the English custom, before taking us through a narrow, wood-panelled vestibule into a hall which fills much of the ground floor though offices, both household and to do with Dawtrey's commercial enterprises, lead off it.

The rest of the day passes in a confusion of eating, entertainment and business, of much coining and going. A physician is sent for to bind Eddie's arm and I have to forbear from openly challenging the idiocies In- practises in the name of medicine and offering my own poultices and herbal remedies, though later on I put together a potion using some of the spices we have brought and some herbs from the kitchen garden behind the Dawtreys' house. This will keep his fever down and speed up the healing process.

The people he saw through the afternoon were, of course, merchants. What Eddie wants for the Yorkists is money. What they want is lowering of duties, and a lifting of restrictions once a York is on the throne or, anyway, the government in the hands of Yorkists rather than a mad, spendthrift king and a witch of a queen. And, of course, Eddie can't deliver without the cash, and they daren't be seen to support him until the Yorkists are in power as to do so might be putting their heads all too literally on the block. So they proceed with mouse-like caution, while Eddie makes promises he can't keep.

Then one old man, with a long, flowing white beard and a big red velvet hat with a long scarf looped round it and round his neck, above a black velvet gown, comes rumbling in, stamping newly fallen snow off his boots and refusing to be divested of his cloak until he has drunk a quart of red wine heated with cloves and cinnamon, our cloves and cinnamon, with small sour apples bobbing in it, and eaten half a loaf of hot bread and a plate of rabbit stew. Then he coughs like a whale and spits a great fistful of phlegm into the tire, whose heat he was keeping from every one else. He ignores Eddie and turns to Alderman Dawtrey. 'Fucking Hanse,' he says.

'Oh, hear, hear,' say all the rest.

'Over the fucking top this time,' he says.

'Oh, absolutely,' they reply.

'You know what their latest ploy is?' 'No, but you're going to tell us.'

'No Inglysshe cloth north or east of the Weser unless it's in Hanse ships.' 'You're joking.'

'No. I've a lad works in their kitchens down Steelyard, keeps his ears and eyes open. They'll be coming up to Guildhall in a day or two with a proclamation to that effect.'

'Fucking German bastards.'

'What are we going to do? Got to do something. They've already tied up the cloth markets in Antwerp, Bruges and Cologne. We'll be lucky if we make ten per cent.' Dawtrey turned on Eddie. 'You see? If we had a proper king who lived in London, or Westminster anyway, and had some real clout, they wouldn't dare. I mean, if you were king, what would you do?'

Eddie doesn't hesitate.

'I'd tell my Lord High Admiral to get the fleet out and sink the next Hanse convoy that came anywhere near our coasts and then I'd invite the bastards in Steelyard to dinner in the Tower and suggest a compromise might be reached before they go home.'

It's what they want to hear.

At this moment Ali swings himself nearer on that stick of his, takes Eddie by the elbow and they have a few quiet words together. By the way, Prince Harihara and Anish are no longer with us, having retired to a chamber at the back of the house where they're busy filling chamber-pots. I told them not to drink the water unless they had seen it boiled first. Later I'll make sure they eat some plain boiled rice and suck a lemon or two. Then Eddie nods and turns back to these merchants. 'I don't know why I didn't think of it straight away,' he says, 'but my lord of Warwick, over in Calais, has eight carvels – with cannon – and I'm sure, for a fairly large consideration, he could have them mocked up to look like pirates

And so it goes on, through to about two o'clock when Mistress Dawtrey causes a dinner to be served so all the visitors can eat, and drink of course, before early nightfall. There's roast swan and sturgeon, a barrel of oysters, followed by marzipan made from almonds and crystallised sugar-cane juice bought off a Moorish boat that has just come in from Malaga and a barrel of the sweet wine from the same port. But half-way through Eddie goes a touch pale and begins to sweat, and I suggest he should be in bed. He argues, till I let him know I'll come up and tuck him in.

So here we are now, and his little man is no longer a little man but a very big man, standing up proud like a bowsprit above his stomach, and flicking the way a young man's does when its full of blood and spunk and responds to the heartbeat.

'But I can't lie with you,' he moans. 'My fucking arm. I'll never be able to hold myself on top of you and do it properly.'

'Properly?' I say, marvelling at the innocence of this seventeen-year-old. 'What's properly?'

And I swing my leg, which glows like a ripe peach in the candlelight, across his tummy and kneel above him. I tease the tip of his prick with the lips of my cunt for a moment or two then lower her on to him, swallowing him right up. And. of course, the silly bugger conies straight away and I have to start all over again.

Chapter Twenty

Not, I promise you, out of our love-play, but taking infection from the filth, damp and cold of the attic they have hidden him in, Eddie's fever worsens. The cut on his arm festers a little, oozes a yellow pus and then a colourless ichor, and he complains of alternating heat and cold, comes out in terrible sweats, and suffers a thirst like torture. It's so bad Mistress Dawtrey wants him out of the place, believing him perhaps to have the plague, but it is winter with frost most nights and sometimes all through the day as well, and the plague never strikes, they say. when the weather is cold. Anyway, he lives thus through three days and nights and no one survives the plague that long. And now it occurs to me that I know why plague absents itself in winter, though no one will believe me. It's carried by fleas. And frost kills fleas. Simple as that.

I find this fever enhances our love-making. Think of the heat of his body almost too hot to touch, after I have stripped off beneath those cobwebby rafters, low, so that short though I am I have to stoop, and the icy draught thrusts like a sword through the gaps round the tiny window. Imagine us on deep straw mattresses, the top one eiderdown from Zeeland, beneath a pile of woollen blankets and furs making a cave filled with the odours of sweat, sperm, my love-juices, the slick sweetness of pus and shit. Then when it's over for a time and I lie with my head on his shoulder, my runny nose peeping above the coven, and our breaths making mist in the dim light above our heads and the pigeons inside the eaves cr-croo, cr-croo, and the mice scuttle between the joists. Runny nose? Yes, I've caught the cold. The cold even-one in this wet, cold island has.

But Mistress Dawtrey has another reason for wanting Eddie out. He is a Yorkist. All right, so most of the City is, but the garrison in the Tower under the command of Lord Scales is the King's. Unpopular though Scales and his garrison are, once he knows where Eddie is a quick sortie with a hundred or so professional soldiers could easily get down the seven or so blocks on East Cheap that separate us from the Tower and snatch him before the City can mobilise its own militia against them. Or so says Mistress Dawtrey, and the Alderman agrees.

And so, outside the attic, the household fidgets and chafes. Anish and his two secretaries, Moplahs from Malabar, lean hard-working youths who are losing their sight through working at their accounts and copying the Prince's letters in light which even at midday is no better than gloomy, work away at the books, pretending there is more to be done than there actually is, yet finding mistakes at the eighth or ninth perusal of their papers. The Prince himself sits in silence at the head of the big table in the hall, which annoys the Alderman since it is where he is accustomed to preside, and there he drums his fingers and stares with what he imagines is dignified melancholy at a future that has become obscure if not pointless. Actually he has chronic indigestion, which I try to alleviate with peppermint cordial I buy at an apothecary's at the Poultry Lane end of Old Jewry. And what an apothecary! What a shop! He has a dead tortoise hanging up, a small crocodile, bladders, musty seeds and it is all filthy. In Vijayanagara he would have been closed down as a health hazard.

And with every hour Mistress Dawtrey, who seemed such a buxom, welcoming person when we first arrived, bumbles about her household tasks, which consist mainly of chivvying the help, muttering beneath her breath about how the Queen will have search parties out by now all up and down Wading Street to the north-west and Ermine Street to the north, as if these are the only thoroughfares out of London to take us to the parts we want to go to. She herself has never left London and has no conception at all of what a place might be like if it be different from London.

Alderman Dawtrey, a vintner specialising in sweet Iberian wines, such as sack and malaga, keeps to his counting-house at the back of the property from where he sends out his apprentices to run errands to the quays, making sure his ships are sailing and welcoming those returning, and generally pretending to be busy. But in truth he is staying indoors because he knows if he goes out their worships the other aldermen and the justices of the City, too, might question him as to our whereabouts and he does not wish to involve them in falsehoods. Clearly the whole household welcomed us on the understanding that we would be there for one night at the most.

Well, there must have been a spy in the household, there usually is, because on the third night they come for us, for Eddie anyway, and know where to go. We hear the tramp of their feet coming up East Cheap, and…

'Eddie,' I say, 'that's soldiers, by the clink of their harness and the clatter of their horses' hoofs.'

But this is the first time he's got himself together enough to do it 'properly', that is with my legs spread beneath him, my knees up and splayed, and him lying on top of me supported by his elbows and his arms. And he bangs away in that position, like a pestle in a mortar, pleasuring neither of us as much as we do when I call the tune. But at least she's wet and ready for it, having done it in two of my ways earlier in the evening, so even if there's not much pleasure there's no pain either – though what I am colluding with, had I not been ready to let him do it this way, would have been rape.

However, that we have already been there before is almost our undoing, that and the way I have taught him to hold back, for now he is taking far too long,

'Come on, Eddie,' I cry, as we hear them hammering on the big street door below, 'gerroff will yer.'

See, I am already learning to speak English the way the natives do.

'Damn it, no,' he grunts, 'I'll not be hurried thus,' and he keeps up the same dull rhythm.

Then the quality of the sounds shifts to something nearer and more resonant as they get indoors. There's a crash of pewter and faience and I know that a fine Moorish bowl, freely painted in green and pale yellow patterns, which Mistress Dawtrey prizes, has gone from the big table to the floor. She'll not risk any more breakages and I can imagine the jerk of her head that sends them stamping up the first flight of carved stairs.

It's ladders from now on, two, the first coming through a wide square hole in the first floor, the second propped against the threshold of a low upright plank door that opens into our nest of love.

Thump, thump on the stairs, and thump, thump on my pelvis. Voices, harsh, deep, gruff, with a cleared throat and phlegmy rasp like stones off a shovel.

'He's up there, milord. Up that fucking ladder. Behind that door.'

Silence, then another voice, this time the Norman drawl. 'Come on, Eddie. We know you're there. Be a good chap and come down.'

'Bastard John Clifford,' says Eddie, in my ear. Then, much louder: 'Fuck oft", Clifford.' Then quieter again: 'Bastard hates me. He'll have my balls off before he hands me over to the hangman.'

But the thought doesn't stop him fucking me. Outside: 'Get an axe, old chap, will you?' Inside: 'His dad got killed at St Alban's, doesn't like Yorkists.' Thump, thump. 'Nearly there.'

Outside: 'Oh, for Christ's sake, try the fireplace in the main hall.^-

Lots of running up and down stairs, up the ladders.

'Here, give it to me.' Thump, thump, and the plank door begins splitting not far above my head, and the axe-blade flashes briefly. Then a whoop of pleasure. Two actually.

One outside: 'He-e-e-ere comes Johnny!'

One inside: 'He-e-e-ere comes Eddie!'

Another plank comes loose, Eddie rolls off me, hauls me upright, stark naked as we both are, picks up a chest that's at the end of our makeshift bed and smashes it against the joists. At the second blow he's through and a shower of tiles goes skittering into the gully between the two roof ridges. He's not let go of the chest, though, and now heaves it at the door. 'Aaaargh!' and we hear a great crashing and banging as Clifford, I suppose, takes it on his midriff and falls off the ladder. From the musical, mystical chimes we hear I guess the chest bursts open and showers him with gold pieces.

Eddie's out on the roof, reaching in to get me, grabs a bare arm, hauls me out. Oh, Shiva, it's cold. And I slip down on my bum into the gully, with him slithering behind and almost on top of me. He gets me to my feet and for a brief moment I can take in the night, the stars, the roofs, hundreds of them, the spires, the rising three-quarter moon, the silver ribbon of the river, the rising threads of smoke from still smouldering fires. Then the cold strikes again, like a blow in my lungs, like knives on my feet and hands.

'Come on!'

Two things the Londoners live in mortal fear of: plague and fire. And against the latter the big houses, with yards closed off from the public thoroughfares, have rungs fastened into the walls so people can use the windows, even the highest windows, to get to safety. From where we are the highest, nearest window-sill is five feet below us and the top rung three feet below that. Eddie goes first then, holding the guttering with icy fingers, I lower my feet towards him so he can guide them on to the sill. The insteps of my feet feel ticklish, the rough loam of the wall between its timbers scrape my breasts. There is a brick frame round the window and I get the fingertips of my left hand between two narrow bricks.

It isn't a big drop. The lean-to roof, with a shallower camber than the roofs of the house, is below us. Several things now happen at once.

Ali appears, coming in from the street through the yard door. He looks up at us with his one gleaming eye, waves and disappears into the stable. Clifford. I suppose it is Clifford, appears in the gully above us. Then disappears. I can hear him shouting but not make out what he says as he storms down the inside of the house, calling the soldiers together behind him, or sending them on in front. Ali comes out of the stable, hauling Genet on the end of a rope halter. Eddie, after a moment's hesitation, launches himself, bare-arsed, on to the stallion's back. Genet rears like a mad thing but Eddie hangs on round his neck and scoops up the rope halter. Soldiers appear in the gateway behind Ali who steps to one side as, knees and ankles, Eddie drives Genet into their midst. A clatter of weapons and armour, hoofs on cobbles flashing sparks, a neigh like a banshee, and they are gone, with the soldiers making a show of following them.

Ali comes and stands beneath me, looking up with his squinting eye. 'You'll catch your death,' he says.

He helps me down with his good arm, steadying me with his bad one until my toes touch the stones. Then he wriggles out of his smelly old fur and wraps it round me.

'And that, Mah-Lo, is quite enough for one session.'

I drew in breath and let out a long sigh. She was right but I had been so caught up in her telling of this eight-year-old tale that I had quite forgotten where I was. But Ali's garden was all around me, just as it had been, and Ali himself in the shade of his tree on the other side of the table. He appeared to be asleep, but stirred, emitted a tiny fart, opened his one eye.

Uma turned to him. 'Ali, ask Murteza to fetch the children. I should go now.'

Ali rang a little handbell and presently the Nubian servant appeared, received his instructions and departed.

Una stood. 'It has been a pleasure,' she said, again dipping her head above her lingers.

I struggled to my feet. 'Wonderful, wonderful, I assure you,' I managed to blurt out. 'Will you… when will you…?'

'Oh, I shall be back when Ali reaches a point where my side of the story is needed.'

And she walked away, across the flags, past the little fountain, through the pierced sandalwood door. Briefly I caught a glimpse of two young children in the vestibule, holding Murteza's big black hands. He passed them to their mother and the door swung shut.

There was a long moment of silence before I sighed again.

'She tells a good story, doesn't she?' Ali murmured.

'Yes,' I said. Then I gave it a moment's thought. 'And true, I suppose?'

'As the day is long. Why should you think otherwise?'

Again that brow, lifted like a cobbler's needle.

'Oh, I don't know. These three voices you are giving me. Your own, the Prince's letters, and now Uma's. I suspect art, contrivance.' 'Contrivance? What can you possibly mean?'

Chapter Twenty-One

I glanced up over the low eaves at the fanciful dragons and suchlike that adorned the gables of Ali's house, and shivered. So long, I thought, as he limits himself to three narrators, I'll go along with him. But if a fourth appears, making, forgive me, a set of Chinese boxes out of it… I resumed my seat, breathed in. A hint of Uma's perfume still lay on the air.

'What did you do then?' I asked.

Ali sipped lemonade, eyed me across the rim of his gilded cup. 'Dear Mah-Lo,' he murmured, 'this is the tenth consecutive day you have come to hear my tale. And I cannot believe that, following the vigour of Uma's story-telling, you want to hear more from me. I am not so conceited that I cannot recognise that I lack her style, her enthusiasm.'

I could see that my passing doubts had disturbed him and I was at pains to reassure him that truly I was enthralled, and not least by the unassailable veracity of his telling.

'Very well, then.' Ali set down his cup, stretched his legs out into the slanting sunlight and laced his fingers, the good ones and the withered ones, over his hollowed stomach. He cleared his throat. I took the poor shivering thing,' he resumed, 'back into the house and sat her down on a settle in front of the fire. I kicked the smouldering logs into life and tossed on another, then went in search of a hot drink for her. At that moment the main hall of Alderman Dawtrey's house was empty, apart from a couple of small long-haired while dogs that he kept, which snuffled about everywhere and nibbed their penises against your shins if you sat down. But by the time I got back from the kitchen with a mug of mulled wine for Uma, there was quite a gathering, summoned I suppose by the commotion which had just taken place…"

Prince Harihara had taken the big chair with arms at the end of the table, which, of course, annoyed the Alderman as it always did. The Prince was wearing a lace-trimmed nightshirt, beneath a velvet stocking cap with a gold tassle on the 'toe', both purchases made in Venice. His long black hair and glossy cheeks shone in the lamp- and candle-lights. Next to him was Anish, shivering despite his coat of beaver. At the other end of the table Mrs Dawtrey was having hysterics, while the Alderman stood with his back to the fire and Uma to his side. Although he was angry and disturbed, I could see how his eyes kept flickering to the flesh she had left exposed above her breasts in spite of the coat I had given her. I longed to put the poor fool out of his misery and tell him, yes. you're quite right, she's a woman and naked underneath it.

The Prince looked up at me as I went past with a cup of hot wine for Uma. 'Ali, Eddie March has gone, then?'

'It looks like it.'

'And won't be back?'

'I doubt it.'

'March is not coming back here,' Mistress Dawtrey screamed. 'We'll end up chopped in pieces on Tower Green if he conies back here.'

She had not understood our conversation, of course, but no doubt had heard the name of March in the middle of it.

The Prince ignored her, went on: 'So, Ali, we no longer have our guide to show us the way to the north of Ingerlond.'

I assented.

'Master Dawtrey has expressed a desire that we should begone by daybreak. The question is, where shall we go? Where is there to go?'

There was an unaccustomed tremor in his voice, a hint of weariness and anxiety, fear even. It dawned on me that he was at the end of his tether: thousands of miles from home, divested of almost all the prestige of rank he was used to; bewildered by everything around him – not just his dubious position in a strange country of having allied himself to a rebel, a traitor, but the food, the language, the people, the weather. I reminded myself that I was the traveller, that I was used to situations like this, that I had no home, that Vijayanagara was as strange to me as Ingerlond. It was a consideration I had not given enough attention to, mainly because until now Prince Harihara and Anish had managed so well. But now I felt nothing would satisfy them but to return to the river, take a boat back across the water and retrace our steps to the warmth, comfort, security, and decency of their homeland. Uma sneezed.

I turned to Alderman Dawtrey and did the best I could with my limited command of his language. 'Sir,' I said, 'it is unreasonable to expect the Prince and his following to be gone by daybreak. But I think I can find people in London who will help us, if you would give me until the afternoon to organise it.'

After some blustering, largely feigned I believe to satisfy his wife, he agreed, especially when I suggested to him that he might like to take what spices and condiments we still had off our hands for a fair price so we would have money to pay our way on our journey. He offered a fifth of their street value but I got him up to a third – forty-five pounds. I was content to do this: it left us with no large load to carry, fewer mules and muleteers to hire, and we would be far less conspicuous as we travelled through the country. And, when all was said and done, the actual sum remained high: it was enough to keep us all in funds and tolerable comfort for a month or more. And after that we would still have the small bags of gems we had secreted about us.

But I still had to pursue the plan I had in mind and put it into effect – and Uma was still wearing my furs and nothing else. Although almost every man there knew she was a woman, they all believed they were the only ones in the know, so it remained advisable, and might one day turn out to be useful, that we maintained the fiction that she was a man. I murmured in her ear and followed her up the stairs (still strewn with broken ornaments, timber from the chest, and occasional gold pieces that had not yet been collected), and the two ladders to the attic she had shared with March. There, while I looked out through the hole March had made in the roof at the view of the silver river snaking beneath the setting moon in a big loop southwards to the twin towers of Westminster, she took off my furs, and resumed her monkish habit.

"Where do you plan to go?" she asked. 'Who are these allies you have found who will help us?' But she didn't wait for an answer. 'Don't bother. I can guess. I'll come too.'

And, grinning up at me, she pulled the handsome coat of sable that March had neglected to take with him over her monkish gown while I shrugged myself into my mixture of fox and musk rat, still warm and scented from her skin.

We let ourselves out quietly through the kitchen and kitchen offices, across the yard, through the gate and into East Cheap, turning right up Candlewick, over the crossing and into Budge Row. We could now see the spire of St Paul's at the end of Watling Street ahead of us, a thin needle, with the moon turning orange to the left of the tower it perched on, then we turned right.

'I know where we're going,' Uma said, and squeezed my hand. There was almost a sort of glee in her voice.

'You do?'

'You're following the signs.'

'What signs?'

'The little red hearts.'

She was right. Straight on unless, where there's a corner or a crossing, a small red heart, chalked, painted, or cut from material and fixed high up on a building, tells you to leave the street you're on and take a new turning. You couldn't really see them in the darkness but I had followed them the day before, just as I had in most of the big cities we had passed through since landing at Venice, at least when opportunity arose. Thus we made our way, just as the sky behind us began to lighten, and small birds here or there in the caves above us stirred and chirruped, and a distant dog barked, into a small warren of alleys, most too narrow to take a cart or even a donkey with two panniers. And, in effect, we moved out of the everyday illusionary world of commerce, politics, law and order, publicly approved religion into that parallel universe where most of us live some of the time, and where, when we do, we are truly human and free, the underworld of the Brothers.

In Needlcr's Lane a tiny church huddled between taller houses whose eaves spread over it, the church of St Benet Sherehog, and next to it the church of St Pancras. Both were small, not much bigger than the shrine to the elephant-headed god Ganesha in whose precincts I had been welcomed on my first visit to Vijayanagara – but, oh, so very different,

Beneath a semi-circular arch carved with devils and lost souls there was a low double door, with a knocker – a hand clasping a ball, cast in bronze, finely modelled. I struck three sharp blows with it, and then one yet heavier. We waited. A couple of black rats scurried down the alley away from us. Then bolts on the other side of the timbers slipped back, silently because they had been greased, and the circular handle tilted a little. We had heard no footsteps, neither did the hinges creak nor the bottom of the door squeal on the stone floor.

'Nothing is true," I said.

'Everything is permitted,' the cowled figure on the other side of the opening door murmured. 'Come in, Brother Ismail, and your companion too.'

He was carrying a lamp, which briefly illuminated the almost square nave he led us through, throwing dancing light across the squat pillars with their carved capitals. I had, as I have said, already been there, but in daylight. Now the crudely rendered imps, painted in primary colours, flashing their bums, sucking their genitals, looked even more startling and weird as the shadows cast by the lamp shifted over them. I could not help wondering at these images and comparing them with the sculptures one sees in Vijayanagara. There all is open and happy, here sly and grubby… but this is not the place for a dissertation on religious art except to say that the one image that did appeal was of Mary, above the altar in a side-chapel through which our guide now led us. Heavy-lidded, angel-mouthed, she was robed in deep-sea blue and crowned with silver. Her feet rested in the curve of a crescent moon, thin as a sickle-blade. Her smile was knowing – you felt she knew more than she was prepared to acknowledge.

Behind a pulpit there was a staircase that descended to another wooden door. It opened into a crypt or cellar. It was large, serving both churches, and was divided by rows of plain pillars supporting low, vaulted ceilings. It was furnished with plain stone boxes, tombs, about thirty. There was no altar. The air was fresh, a little musty but not noisome. In one comer a family of vagrants, a man, two women, three children and a dog, huddled beneath a pile ot rags and scraps of fur and pretended to be warm. Our guide sat on a tomb and set down his lamp beside him.

'This,' I said to Uma, 'is Brother Abraham, a Brother of the Free Spirit.'

'I know," she said. 'I mean, I know he is a Brother of the Free Spirit." And offered Abraham a smile of gentle complicity. He pushed back his hood, revealing a lean but pleasant face with smile lines as well as those etched by asceticism. His hair was lank, grey, and tonsured, but by nature rather than a razor.

In spite of the lugubriousness of his expression in repose, he smiled readily enough. He cleared his throat. 'So, what can I do for you, Brother Ismail?'

I explained what I had not told him on my first visit, how we wished to go into the north-west of the country and find Prince Harihara's brother Jehani. Uma took up the tale, of how we had had a guide, Eddie March, but he had fallen foul of the Queen's people and fled arrest by Lord John Clifford and Lord Scales and was nowhere to be found, and how our host and hostess were afraid of the Queen's people and wanted to send us on our way.

Abraham nodded all through this, stroked his bristly upper lip between thumb and forefinger.

'We have a Brother from the north-west,' he said, when we had finished, 'named Enoch. But he's a journeyman-fishmonger and he'll be working down at Fish Wharf at the end of Pudding Lane, next to Billingsgate, until midday. I can send to his house and ask his wife to send him on here as soon as he's finished. Will that do?'

Uma and I looked at each other, shrugged. 'Yes, that will do.'

There did not seem to be anything to be gained by returning to East Cheap until we had met up with this Enoch so we accepted Brother Abraham's invitation to remain in the crypt until our new guide came. We were thus tempted to indulge ourselves with holy-conversation, for Abraham was clearly an adept in the science of living. Furthermore, he was curious to learn about Vijayanagara which he quickly realised was as close to a manifestation and incarnation of the Holy City as one could hope for. It was important to him while he had the chance to hear as much as he could of Uma's native city for thus he would be strengthened in the daily struggle to remain true to his refusal of faith in the face of Church and State.

On our side, Uma and I were interested to hear how the refusal was faring in Ingerlond.

'Ali, what is all this?' I interjected.

'My dear Mah-Lo, have we not already discussed three great orders of freemen?'

'I have no idea what you are talking about. What three orders?'

'The Brothers of the Free Spirit, the Assassins who are the innermost circle of the Ismaelites and Sufis, and the Thugs?'

'The last two I had heard of before I came here, and you have said enough to imply that you have sympathies at least with the Assassins. But you make it all sound like a world-wide conspiracy.'

Ali laughed lightly. 'No such thing is possible. For the supreme tenet of all three orders is that their members should be free, obligated by one principle only: that when you meet a like-minded person in need or difficulties you help him. Conspirators require rides, plans, obedience. Obedience, of all things, is what we most detest.'

'I am none the wiser, but you had better continue with your story'. You had just asked this Abraham how things were in Ingerlond.'

'Not well.' He sighed, and shifted a little on the cold stone he was sitting on. 'In almost all places the Refusal lives in hidden places, for too many in the last fifty years have been put to the torture and burned. Yet it is true that many hold to the beliefs of John Wycliffe, even if they do follow the road he signposted for us and even if they do not openly confess their faith as their fathers and mothers did. Yet, generally speaking, a Lollard preacher, in a graveyard, outside a city's gates, even at a market cross, will draw a crowd of sympathisers, who will leave strengthened if not actually prepared to march against the King and bishops as Wat Tyler. John Ball, Jack Straw and John Cade did. And thousands with them.'

'How far, then, will they go clown the road of the free spirit?' Uma insisted.

'Oh, not far, and not beyond applying the light of good reason to the doctrines of the Church. They will deny the presence of Jesus in the sacraments, saying it is a strange god that can be lapped by dogs and eaten by mice. They can see how much against Scripture it is that priests should be able to sell forgiveness of sins, and they find the belief in Purgatory whereby the rich can buy their way into heaven through masses said for their souls abominable. They will condemn chastity in priests and monks as leading to unnatural vices, and in nuns as leading to abortion and infanticide. The more extreme declare all war to be evil, it being the murdering and plundering of the poor to win glory for kings, even the making of weapons to be evil…'

'But all this is merely nay-saying,' Uma cried. 'Do they not speculate about what can be put in the place of all the evil shit?'

'Some do in the privacy of their homes or in the company of three or four like-minded friends they can trust.' If Abraham was surprised or shocked by her vehemence, he showed it only in the soothing tone he adopted. 'For instance, they will argue that the giving of women in marriage is unjust, not out of lewdness as their enemies proclaim but because women should not be treated as chattels. Some argue that all property should be held in common, that councils where all sit together should decide what laws and customs should be followed rather than the whims of kings, lords and bishops.'

'And what sort of people turn out for the Brothers?'

'All sorts. From ploughmen to gentry, even lords. Eighty years ago, when he ruled the realm as King Richard's regent, John of Gaunt, great-grandfather of our present king, protected John Wycliffe. Lord Cobham, Sir John Oldcastle as he was before he married, continued that tradition and followed the teaching of the Lollards. He, however, was burned at the command of the present king's father, forty-five years ago. Almost worse, thanks to the cunning of the powers that be, he is now reviled as a drunken, whoreson coward, nicknamed Falstalf.'

For a moment his face was clouded with sadness. Then he went on: 'But the main reason why we thrive at present only a little, compared with a few years back, is these present troubles, these wars between the great lords. Since the plague came a hundred years ago, there have been fewer people to firm the land for them so wages have gone up and prices have dropped. Therefore the lords covet each other's land and instead of settling the disputes in courts or Parliament or by the King's command, they fight. And that means any able-bodied man can get a good day's wage wearing the livery of his master with the prospect, if he's on the winning side, of loot, booty, a share of ransom money, even land of his own or a tenancy. If he's on the losing side he just runs away and lives to fight another day. Also, because of these wars, outside London and the big cities law and civil society have broken down. There is nothing to rebel against and every chance of bettering oneself in the crude, brute anarchy that exists. Since anarchy of a sort is already with us there-is no point in striving and risking death at the stake for the higher anarchy that might ennoble us all.'

And so we went on through the last heavy dark hours before dawn until the sun rose and with it the less than heavenly city: we could hear the clopping of hoofs, the bleat of sheep driven to the shambles, the squeal of cart-wheels, the shouts and calls of street-sellers, the general hubbub of the great wen, that weeping boil, in whose innermost heart we now were hidden.

It was about then that Brother Abraham told us just how holy was the spot in which we sheltered, dedicated as half of it was to the boy saint St Pancras, a bone of whose finger was kept in a reliquary in the second of the two tiny churches. It was, he said, the first church founded in Albion by St Augustine and the spot chosen for it was the site of a shrine that predated even the great Julius Caesar who built the Tower. This shrine or temple, as old as the henges in the west, belonged, so Abraham's account had it, to King Lud who built the city around it and was indeed no king but a river god.

The family of beggar-folk got themselves up and discreetly, silently, slipped away up the stone stairs. Now we could see them properly, divested of their rags and threadbare blankets, they revealed themselves from the darkness of their skin, darker than mine, almost as dark as Uma's, to be gypsies. I wondered where the rest of their tribe were and why they had separated from them.

The noise came and went in waves as folk opened the doors above and came in to make offerings or prayers to the image we had seen in the side-chapel: the Mother, Mary. Isis, Ishtar, Parvati. Below the stone floor our talk continued as we awaited the arrival of Enoch the fishmonger, and returned to the concept, the vision, of the Perfect Society that dominated our thoughts and longings. Abraham especially dwelt on Ingerlond before the Normans came: it had been, he said, rural and village-based, yet in its way as happy and blessed as the Heavenly City all three of us looked towards and which Vijayanagara represented, in much the same way as its emperor and empress are avatars for the gods Vishnu and Parvati.

We also speculated about the way the same light and knowing-ih-ss had come to each of us and our fellow hierophants but by such different routes and out of such alien beginnings.

Chapter Twenty-Two

In East Cheap a letter awaited me.

Ali

Shortly after your departure early this morning Alderman Dawtrey was honoured with a visit by Lord Scales, Constable of the Tower. He is a forceful old man and came accompanied by a troop of men-at-arms. He was of a mind to grant Anish, the few servants we have left and myself more comfortable rooms than the Alderman can supply, but in the Tower, which apparently is not merely a fortress but a royal palace too.

He is angry that we accepted hospitality from Richard Neville and Edward March in Calais and that we connived in March's escape last night. However, I pointed out to him that Anish and I had had very little to do with any of this, being guided entirely by the only member of our party who knew anything about Ingerlond – namely you. I think he understood.

Things will turn out all right for us – we have money from the sale of our goods, and many gems held hidden in reserve. I have, however, left some of the latter for you under my mattress. I suggest you use these to forward the aims of our expedition as you know them, but advise you to remain amongst the Yorkists as the King's people are now convinced that that is where your sympathies lie.

No doubt we shall be reunited under happier circumstances. Please accept my best wishes, and give my deepest affection [heavily crossed-out] respects to your reverend companion.

Harihara, Prince of Vijayanagara, cousin and accredited plenipotentiary of His Heavenly Eminence the Emperor Mallikarjuna

This was what Chamberlain Anish had written on the back of an old bill of lading the Alderman had found for him in the midst of the scramble that had taken place in the few minutes Lord Scales had allowed before he marched them all off to the Tower.

I turned to Brother Abraham, who had accompanied us back to East Cheap from the churches of Sts Benet Sherehog and Pancras, and did my best to ignore Mistress Dawtrey, who was shouting and squealing in her determination to get us off the premises.

'Can we get them out of the Tower?' I asked.

'No,' he replied, 'No one escapes unless they have the help and collusion of one of the gaolers.'

'Gaolers? It is a prison as well as a palace?'

'Yes. And for traitors most especially.'

'Are the Prince and Anish in mortal danger?'

Abraham thought for a moment, again caressing his top lip. 'Not for as long as their gaolers can be persuaded that there is something to be gained from keeping them alive,' he said at last. 'They have ransom value, no doubt, and they might be exchanged for prisoners the Yorkists hold. They might even be perceived as the means whereby a lucrative trade in spices and gems could be developed. For all these reasons they are probably worth more alive than dead. This being the case it is likely too that they will be kept in tolerable comfort.'

'What should we do, then?'

'You and Uma are in far greater danger. It is you who helped March escape, and as mere servants you have no value if you arc-captured. The Queen is a merciless enemy and delights in the blood of all who oppose her – Lord Scales will gain merit if he has you publicly dismembered

I recalled the quartered, eviscerated bodies fixed above the gate to London Bridge and shuddered.

Abraham continued. 'I think it best that you leave the City as quickly as you can and head up Watling Street for those parts of the country where the Yorkists still hold sway. Enoch will guide you. But I think, too, you should go disguised, at least until you are several leagues away.'

'Disguised? How?'

'You could… um, white-up.'

Mistress Dawtrey was becoming unbearably importunate, so, blocking my ears to the noise she was making, I got myself upstairs, found my way to the room Prince Harihara and Anish had occupied, burrowed around in and under the mattress and came up with two soft leather drawstring bags, each the size of a fist, which chinked solidly and satisfyingly as if loaded with small pebbles. I fingered one and identified the two large kurundams, with their sharp pointed pyramidal ends, and wondered what possible use they could be to us since, with their size and colour, they were fit for a monarch's sceptre and worth far more than we could ever need or, indeed, gain from them. But then, perhaps, I thought, that was precisely what Prince Harihara had had in mind: faced with the greatest magnates in the land and a queen profoundly jealous of her status, he might be forced to part with them, either for nothing or for a sum well below their worth. By leaving them with me he was assured I would keep them secret and not part with them except under the direst necessity.

I stuffed the bags in the deepest recesses of my loincloth beneath my cape and furs, and hurried back downstairs to find Uma undergoing a transformation. Enoch the fishmonger had arrived and was smearing her face with a mixture of pig's lard and chalk dust, converting her physiognomy into that of a clown or juggler. Just as I was about to remonstrate, believing that this would attract attention rather than deflect it, Abraham drew in his breath sharply, moved forward and, with an edge of his robe, smeared the paste into a thinner film revealing the copper-brown skin beneath.

'There,' he cried, 'that's much better. She looks like a leper.'

Enoch nodded enthusiastically and began to alter his handiwork in subtle ways to produce the effect we wanted.

Enoch was a mute. He was a small, round little man, about forty years old, nearly bald, with a thick black moustache and a stubbled chin. He had become mute, Abraham told us, some thirty years earlier when forced to witness the execution in the customary barbaric way of his fishmonger father and his mother too, for sheltering an antinomian priest. All this was part of the Purges that followed the burning of Lord Cobham.

The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers had taken on the orphan and charitably arranged that he should be apprenticed to one of their guild, but for reasons of safety in London, not in the northern fishing village where his parents had worked. He had proved a good pupil, quickly becoming adept at identifying good bargains when the fishing-boats tied up at Fish Wharf, well able to spot spoiled or stale fish, and knowledgeable to the point of erudition in all the species that can be found in the Thames estuary and the North Sea. He was also remarkably adroit with the big, triangular knife the fishmongers use for filleting and trimming the larger of their wares. However, his inability to speak had precluded him from becoming a master and full member of the guild and he was forced to hire himself out. Perhaps he bore a grudge because of this, or had inherited some of his parents' nonconformity, but at all events he was an independent soul, had travelled a lot and worked in most of the larger Inglysshe ports when the fancy took him. Moreover, he was willing to help any he perceived as being, like his parents, outcasts, non-believers, recusants or dissenters.

Wherever he went he took his sharp, shiny knives, the tools of his trade, the second one being a thin blade of grey steel about nine inches long, worn down by constant sharpening to the likeness of a blade of coarse grass.

'He'll go anywhere, so long as he is close to a supply of fresh fish by Ash Wednesday.' Abraham told us.

'Why is that?' I asked.

'For forty days after that day we eat no meat, only fish. It is the busiest time of year for fishmongers. They make a lot of money during Lent. And when is Ash Wednesday? Why, in ten days' time.

Through Lent he'll be able to hire himself out for threepence a day, maybe more.'

Such was Enoch, who now worked away with grease and chalk to turn Uma and me into lepers whose white skins had been corrupted with brown patches by the disease.

But first we lacked the necessary adjunct of the trade, wooden clappers, one each, made from a small plank attached loosely to a sounding-box which, when shaken, emitted a loud crack or snap. These we were required by law to use whenever we came close to company as a way of keeping people away from us and infection. We, or rather Enoch, procured them from a tiny shop close to Ludgate, at the bottom of the hill between the gate and the bridge over the river Fleet. It was no more than a hovel but stacked to the rafters with chairs, saucepans, broken kitchenware, broken arms and armour, just about everything you can think of but old and broken – apart from our clappers, which were in working order. A curious place.

Thus equipped it became clear how inspired Abraham's choice of a disguise had been. The moment anyone came near enough to recognise or question us, a brisk clap or two sent them scurrying away. We also found that shelter was frequently available when we needed it in the form of lazar houses along the way: these were built on the outside of many towns and larger villages and consisted of a small bam-like structure large enough to accommodate twelve people sleeping together on the floor. Usually they had a little land attached in which vegetables often still grew, with pens for animals. And graves, for the lepers were often left to bury their own dead.

We were not afraid to use these places for they were almost always empty, and when they were not we moved on, cither making shift in other ways or walking until we found one that was. We attempted to question Enoch as to why such provision had been made for so many lepers when there appeared to be remarkably few. He struggled with his affliction in his attempts to tell us, but whether or not he had it right we never found out, because any matter that required more than a basic understanding, anything involving speculation or theorising, was beyond us – he through his muteness, we through our lack of anything beyond basic Inglysshe. Months later I was able to question a learned friar, of whom more later, on the subject but even he was uncertain, so short is the memory of a people when civil disturbance and lawlessness stalk the land: the clear reduction in the numbers suffering from leprosy had begun before he was born and was complete before he grew to manhood. However, he speculated that plague was at the root of the matter: lepers, he guessed, were peculiarly susceptible to it, and while one in three of the population had been wiped out in the plague years, the epidemic had taken almost all the lepers.

Meanwhile, Enoch's first priority was to get us to the western coasts of the island before Lent began so that he could hire himself out to a master fishmonger, practise his trade, and earn enough money to see him and his family through the leaner months of summer when fish goes bad quickly and fish-eaters rely on fish smoked, dried, pickled or salted during the winter months. For this reason we headed more west than north.

It's not my intention, my dear Mah-Lo, to give a minute account of every step of our travels, but I must dwell for a moment on a school or college we passed since it represented the first solid evidence we had of the King's madness. Set outside a large village, in the midst of a water-meadow, at the time partially flooded and frozen, was a pair of large red-brick buildings, each forming a square, the south side, nearest the river, of one of them being a big barn of a church, not yet fully finished.

The road we were on passed between the church and the water-meadow, and was tilled at the time with an unpleasant mixture of frozen, dirty snow and hard, churned-up mud. Pollarded willows, their stubby branches like clenched fists against the stone-like sky, edged the river. On the further bank beyond the wide, full, slowly swirling grey stream, there was another small village, but this one was huddled around a castle, quite a large one, with weighty towers that looked like drums. The cawing of rooks floated across the icy spaces between. There was a bridge but whether or not it was in a good state of repair we did not stay long enough to discover.

The first thing that happened was that our ears were assailed from the interior of the church by a mournful chanting, very high, produced by unbroken voices, a sort of continuous wailing, like the keening of distressed women. We paused to listen to it and were standing thus when a cloud of young boys, about twenty of them, in black velvet gowns, with white collars on their shoulders and velvet caps on their heads, came streaming round the far corner behind us.

'I say, chaps, look at this,' a slender but tall fifteen-year-old called. 'Three lepers by the look of it.'

In common with most people we met he had taken Enoch for a leper too, perhaps only in the early stages of the disease and his blemishes not yet significant, for why else would he remain with us and risk infection?

'Look here,' he yelled at us, 'just you clear off, if you know what's good for you. Come on, get a move on, show us your heels.'

Not understanding clearly what he was saying we did not move quickly enough for him. He picked up a handful of grit and snow, compressed it into a ball and hurled it at us. Clearly he had been trained to throw balls accurately for it struck me hard on the side of my face. Involuntarily I raised my staff and moved towards him. Uma stretched out a hand to restrain me but then she, too, received a snowball in the face, flung by another boy from behind the first. This incensed me further. I snarled, and pressed on.

For a moment I thought he would run, but his friends were all behind him and I could sense that he durst not appear a coward in front of them. Instead he stooped and picked up another ball of snow, hurled it. This one hit me full in the chest, and since I was at that moment crossing a frozen puddle, my feet shot out from under me and I went down on my backside in a fall heavy-enough to knock the breath out of me. Now all of these young hooligans followed their leader, picked up snowballs and hurled them at me, and at Uma and Enoch, who would have run had I not been grounded. Some even, wishing to show bravado in front of their companions, found sticks with which to prod me, and, once I was on my feet again, trip me too, so I tumbled back into the snow and mud. And all the time they shouted, 'Dirty old man, take that! Come on, you nasty bag of bones, get a move on. Unless I'm not mistaken he's some sort of darkie, a gypsy perhaps. Filth like that always catch diseases…' and so on, mostly in high voices like those that still sang on within the church.

Well, no harm came of it in the end. They chivvied us as if they were dogs and we sheep until we were clear of the buildings then took themselves off back inside, leaving us to examine ourselves to see if we had sustained any real hurt, which we had not, and recover our breaths and tempers.

Now, Mah-Lo, this incident had its interesting side, which Uma and I pieced together later. It was indeed a school, but an odd one. First it was only open to the so-called best in the land, judged by birth. The rest were excluded. Next, the pupils were torn from their families at a tender age and made to live there for the best part of the year, sharing large dormitories, eating together, the young made to serve the older like slaves, and frequently beaten by both older pupils and the adult masters; not only beaten, but often forced to submit to all sorts of cruelty including anal rape. I repeat, this was a school! Not a barbaric prison or a barracks. Finally, the strangest anomaly of all, this place had been founded and funded by none other than the King himself, as a place where the offspring of the best families might learn how to behave properly and assist him and his successors in the governance of his country! This, as I have said, was the first and by no means the last example we came across of his madness, and although we had had no choice in the matter and it was no concern of ours at all, I was glad we had found ourselves allied to the faction dedicated to depriving him, if not of his crown, for these people were superstitious about crowns believing they came from God, then at least of the power and rights that went with it.

The river now took a loop to the north-west at the top of which we came to a small town called Marlow! Just like your own name. No, dear friend, I am not making this up. Here, having seen the name on a signpost, Enoch got it into his head that he wanted to go to Oxenford. He tried to explain why but we could make nothing of his grunts and retchings. However, we were in his hands, and since this meant leaving the river and heading north-west we were happy to comply – at least we would be going more or less in the direction we wanted.

After walking through hills and woodlands for a day the landscape suddenly opened out in front of us below a steep hill, which dropped again into the wide river-plain of the Thames – the same river, but it had apparently taken a wide loop to the south-west before turning back north, making a quarter-circle across whose arc we had walked. And far in the distance, lit by the last shafts of golden sunlight making a fan-spread of beams from behind a low bank of cloud, we could see a city of spires and towers, which seemed to hang like a dream of the lost city of paradise above the mists rising from its river. Then the sun was obscured and all turned to black like the cutouts in a shadow play.

Uma squeezed my less functional hand, which she was in the habit of holding as we walked, 'A place of some ambivalence.' she murmured. I nodded, and the three of us began the long descent into the plain.

Chapter Twenty-Three

We continued down the Hills through the rest of that day, often with the distant city in sight beckoning us on, into the wide river-plain, and as we walked a thaw set in around us. Rivulets formed and tinkled as the snow continued to melt, birds sang, and presently in a copse of thin, elegant trees with patchy silvery bark we found clumps of tiny white flowers, shaped like bells. The track we were on became muddy and our feet crackled in what was left of ice as thin as paper. We saw deer, small and reddish brown with white bellies and tiny antlers, not unlike those that live in the deepest thickets of our mountain forests. Indeed, they put me in mind, almost for the first time since we left London, of Prince Harihara and his penchant for hunting. I wondered what had happened to his collection of crossbows and bolts, and for the life of me I could not recall seeing them unloaded from the donkeys' backs at Alderman Dawtrey's house. I supposed they must have got there and were stored somewhere – in his cellars, perhaps.

These deer were browsing on holly until they caught our scent when they melted away from us almost magically and certainly without a sound and probably before they would have been within easy range of the Prince's weapons. Once, beneath a grove of bigger, heavier trees, we saw wild pigs rooting away in the mast that littered the woodland floor. They would have been easier prey.

As we drew nearer the river, we found small settlements of human habitation, though to our eyes, mine and Uma's, most of the dwelling-places seemed less than suitable for domestic animals. They were mostly round, made from woven lengths of willow, the cracks between filled with mud, straw and what was clearly dried dung, with roofs of dried grass or reeds, and high enough in the centres only for a man to stand in. Spirals of bluish-white smoke rose from the centres of these tiny domes, smoke which was aromatic enough and filled the air with a not unpleasant pungent smell, but they must have been hell to live and breathe in. By far the greater part of the Inglysshe people live in huts like these, since those who did not collaborate with their Norman conquerors were enslaved by them.

In the afternoon the track we were on returned to the riverbank, whose serpentine course it followed with an almost continuous line of small, stunted trees, from which the thin branches had been sliced, leaving knobbly lumps like rough boulders at the tops of the trunks. These thin willow branches were used in many ways: woven, they formed the walls of the hovels, or were used m sections called hurdles to make fences. The thinner ones were made into baskets.

Meanwhile, the city of Oxenford loomed nearer through the gathering river mists. Soon we were picking our way through a muddy, wretched shanty-town that huddled around the low walls, which enclosed spires and towers in some numbers, almost as many as there had been in London, but for different reasons. Here they marked the prison- or barrack-like tenements occupied by communities of monks, friars and clerics: Oxenford, it seemed, was not only a prosperous town at the head of the navigable reaches of the Thames, communicating by ancient Roman roads with the middle and northern parts of the country, but also a centre of religious learning and other studies too.

It was not into the city that Enoch led us but to a Franciscan friary outside the city walls, indeed on the southern side of the river and to the west of the main town. We thus passed in front of the main gate, which was protected by a small but ancient castle, and moved on, through a ribbon of tightly packed huts that lay between the wall and the river, until we came to a small ferry- station.

Here we divested ourselves of our leprous disguise, smearing the white clay into an even mask and casting aside our clappers, for Enoch managed to make it clear to us that the time had arrived when we should aim to be welcomed rather than rejected by our fellows.

The river was now flowing briskly, brown and with scurrying eddies, and our passage across it was terrifying, bringing us nearer to a watery death than the typhoons I have lived through in the China Sea. Our craft was a tiny round boat like a cockle-shell made of woven willow branches smeared with a black sticky substance, which was meant to render them sound. However, it let in water quicker than a young lad dressed in rags could scoop it out while his father paddled us across.

We were now on a long island called Osney lying between the main river and one of its tributaries and largely filled by the Franciscan friary. Enoch knew that Oxenford was a good place for us to separate since we wished to head north and he west, and also because we would find here Wycliffites and Lollards, who were in sympathy with the Brothers of the Free Spirit, amongst the Franciscans.

The buildings in which the Franciscans lived and studied were attractive and modern. They were mostly of brick, a recently discovered material amongst these people, two storeys in height with rows of stone-framed windows, built round two squares or quadrangles. The first of these was planted with herbs in formal rows; in the second, there was a fish-pool. From this they took the large black carp that supplemented their Lenten diet. Two larger buildings, whose pitched roofs were a storey higher than the rest, separated the quadrangles. One was a chapel, the other a refectory. On the ground floors to the sides there were also a library, kitchens, stalls for domestic animals, and above, reached by a narrow stone spiral stair, the rooms of the Prior and a council chamber. The rest was made up of the cells where the friars slept and studied, tiny rooms reached by separate staircases.

The Brothers wore coarse brownish-grey gowns, belted with a rope and with hoods or cowls. Often they wore these up, not, we were told, for warmth, but to signify to their brethren that they were deep in thought, meditation or prayer and did not wish to be spoken to. When the hoods lay on their shoulders, their heads were revealed as shaven, not all over like our Buddhist monks, but in a circle leaving a ring of hair above their ears. All priests, and men intending to be priests, monks or friars, wore their hair thus, but the Franciscans' bald patch was larger and more noticeable than that of the rest.

We were given a warm welcome, for it is a part of the duties demanded by the rule of their founder that travellers, especially poor travellers, and we were certainly that, should always be given what they require. Warm, that is, in feeling, though plain and meagre as far as food and lodging went. We were given a broth made from stewed chicken bones, carrots and cabbage, but at least it was hot, served with black rye bread, and a thin beer to drink. Our beds, however, were nothing but sacks filled with straw laid on prickly, if springy, pallets of dried heather in a long, communal dormitory set apart for visitors. At least we had it to ourselves – few poor people travelled by choice at that time of year.

Just as we were preparing for bed, and wondering how we would keep warm through the night, one of the Brothers knocked at the door and told us that the Prior would like to have conversation with us. Leaving Enoch, Uma and I followed our guide across the quadrangle and up to the Prior's rooms, the principal one of which served as his study. In it there were a hundred books or more, a desk to read them on, a large table, several chairs, and a steadily burning fire.

Prior Peter Marcus, the kindest, most considerate man I have ever met, was small, completely and naturally bald, with mysteriously piercing blue eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, a small snub nose and full lips that creased almost too readily into a broad smile. His fingers, too, were extraordinary: short and almost stubby, very pink, but strong with square-cut nails that were almost white. As soon as he saw us he rose from the largest chair, crudely carved (truth to tell almost all the carving we saw north of Venice was crude, whether of stone or wood), and almost rolled round the large table in front of him to take both my hands in his.

'Brother Ali, my poor brother in freedom, Ali, what a state you're in!'

Well, as you know, dear Mah-Lo, at the best of times I cut a sorry

figure, but the privations of our journey had taken their toll too. I had, for most of the time since we had arrived in that benighted isle, suffered from an almost continuous flux – initially of fecal matter, latterly of blood and black water. The failure to retain fluids had caused a terrible thirst which, of course, I attempted to assuage at any wells we passed and the cleaner-looking rivulets. I had also taken to eating melting snow and ice until the thaw removed their passing solace. No doubt, I looked even more cadaverous than usual.

The cause? Well, of course, the absence of sanitation in London, I suppose, produced a constant presence of pestilential air, coupled with our hosts' readiness to eat and serve meat that had been left to hang for several days, even weeks, before eating it.

Prior Peter asked a few pertinent and succinct questions then rang a small handbell. One of the brethren appeared almost immediately and received from him a short list of herbs, some to be picked fresh from the garden we had crossed in the first quadrangle, others to be found pressed and dried in the friary's herbarium, yet others reduced to tinctures or essences from the apothecary. 'However, we shall resort to essences only in extremis,' he giggled, 'for such is the advice of one of the greatest of our alumni.'

Weak though I was, I was able to cap his little joke. 'You will, I hope, shave all the ingredients with the sharpest of razors.'

And thus began one of the longest, most rewarding conversations I have ever had, stretching as it did over several months, broken only by sleep and my new friend's administrative duties. These included putting on a show of appropriate devotion at the appropriate times, since disguised emissaries of the Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese Oxenford is situated, often slipped into monasteries and friaries checking that the daily offices were said or sung in a proper and seemly manner and that no heresies were heard, spoken or taught.

Uma tired quickly of this, both the offices and our conversation, and soon went temporarily out of our lives, practising what we merely preached to one another, and no doubt having an even better time of it for, as Peter was wont to say, quoting Aristotle, 'It is not gnosis but praxis is the fruit.' Or, knowledge is nothing without action.

However, on this first occasion gnosis went hand in hand with praxis, and within half an hour or so my new friend had prepared, largely with his own hands, an infusion, whose main flavours were peppermint and aniseed, not unpalatable. 'This,' he said, 'will work in two ways. Immediate relief will come in the form of a deep warm sleep, induced by the presence of tincture of opium dissolved in distilled alcohol according to an Arab receipt. We call it laudanum. The opium has the opportune double function of inducing not only the rest you need but a temporary cessation of the peristalsis of the lower bowel. Then there is peppermint oil and oil of aniseed, which, although not as quick acting, will ensure that the cure is prolonged after the effects of the opium have worn off. The mixture was invented by a doctor of medicine here at Oxenford named Collis Browne. Now, look, I cannot send you back to the dormitory, which is cold and uncomfortable. Drink up first, then you must have my couch…'

I protested, of course, but willy-nilly he, with Uma's encouragement, led me into a tiny cubicle behind the big fireplace, on the other side of its chimney-piece. Being thus heated it was already comfortably warm. They laid me on Prior Peter's bed, which, though narrow, was mattressed with swan's down, he said, and fragrant with dry lavender.

There followed an interlude as blissful as any I have experienced for first they divested me of my clothes and then, bathed in warm air as I was, they cleansed my tired, soiled body with sponges soaked in perfumed water. It produced a warm glow over my body, which penetrated to my aching bones. Meanwhile, the laudanum had a similar effect on my soul for behind my closed eyes I entered a world hung with crimson drapes and furnished with gilded chairs, a sort of womb-like place where I fancied myself an unborn babe, about to be born into a future of unlimited powers.,.

Ali's voice jaded. A deep breath, a sigh, a little bubble of saliva in the corner of his mouth and he was asleep. I tiptoed away.