Kings of Albion

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I create something of a stir as I walk through the countryside in my robes, for most people know and venerate the idol whose raiment I have assumed. 'Venerate' is not the right word, for she is more than a goddess, the mother of god. she is a familiar, a friend. There is a world of difference, I soon discover, between the way the dignitaries of the Church approach their icons and that pursued by the common sort. The former make obeisances, offer formal prayers, incense, magnificent jewellery, much of it real, and precious metals. Thus they hope to make these images remote and unapproachable, objects of awe, inspiring fear, even. Through these means the images become legitimators of their own authority and rule, justifications for the taxes and tithes they impose on the poor.

The latter, however, in spite of all this, endeavour to keep in their hearts the particularity of their most local image of the mother and therefore the particularity of the mother herself. The Virgin of Coventry is not the same as the Virgin of Nottingham or Walsingham: she is theirs alone, and no one else's, someone they recognise, can talk to and confide in, adore rather than worship, and who may be capricious, unreliable, but is part of their lives, is the reason why their crops grow, their wives are fertile and, when the time conies, their deaths repose in her arms.

And so, when they see her walking down the lanes, across the hills, on the banks of the river, through their fields and villages, wearing her high gold crown, her blue mantle, her black dress and the jewelled accoutrements of her goddesshood, they welcome her, with some solemnity, some awe, but mostly with a childlike desire to please her… and a childlike faith that she will sort out whatever problems are pressing them at this moment. In all this they share with the people of our own country a genuine religion unmediated by the contrivances of the bosses.

For my part I am, at this time, in a dazed and confused state of mind. Weeks of torture followed by months of deprivation of everything but life itself and the determination to live have left me weak in mind and body. I seem to float slowly but almost effortlessly across the ground, I hear a voice chanting in high, flute-like registers songs of love and gratitude to Parvati and hardly dare believe, it is so beautiful, that it is mine. The villagers strew cherry and apple-blossom petals in my path and moan with pleasure when I solemnly sway and turn and let them see my golden slippers as I dance to their wailing pipes, drums and tambourines, or signal the way to heaven with my twisting arms.

They feed me too: on cream and cheeses as the meadows fill with grass again; on last year's honeycomb, on fish, on bread, butter, coddled eggs and, as the month turns, waxy beans from wool-lined pods then peas, and salads made from sorrel shoots and hawthorn buds. And they are not surprised when I refuse the flesh of newborn lambs, rabbits, hens or pigeons.

I never outstay my welcome – or, rather, I never stay in one place long enough for the magic to wear off, in case what are human and woman in me become more evident than the goddess. And while their faith remains I can perform miracles. Old women on their death-beds rise up… or, if they do not, they sink into sweet, easy sleep with soft smiles on their faces; a young child, who in all his seven years has never said a word but grunts and mews, says the Hail Mary before lapsing back into meaningless splutters – or so his grandma tells us all; a man who fell out of an apple tree at harvest time and has not walked since hops out of bed to get a better view of me as I pass; and a pony that was almost lame walks almost straight when I ride on her back.

And through all this I prosper. The flesh gathers in my breasts and buttocks again…

At this point Uma leant back in her chair and gave her breasts, beneath her bolero, flame-coloured today, a proud and joyful shake. I have to remind myself that the mature lady who is talking to us was once the winsome creature, still in that borderline country between late girl and full woman, she is telling us about.

… my skin regains its creamy fresh smoothness, the shadows of pain and loss that lay round my eyes recede. I revel in the return of spring and summer, the heaped-up snow of hawthorn smelling like the cunts of virgins just at the moment when they take their first cocks between their lips, the drifts of parsleys and chervils beneath them, Solomon's seal with its white waxy testicles dangling below its fleshy leaves, then later the dog-roses, honeysuckles, and tall stands of foxgloves, meadows sheeted with golden buttercups…

Why are you looking so bored? You have heard all this before from Ali? I am sure he cannot speak of it all with the knowledge I have, or bring to it the love I felt… these northern springs. We have the glory of our gardens, fields and forests, but they do not change in the same way with the turn of the year, it is not the same glory. Grander perhaps, but not the same. You were not bored? The imagery I employed to describe the hawthorn smell? Well. Well. Take me as you find me. Never mind. I'll push on. Where was I? Getting better…

Yes, indeed. By the middle of the year, when the villagers are partying beside their midsummer bonfires, when the hay is cut and the wheat beginning to yellow and the rye is five feet tall and, when the breezes breathe across it, shot with blue like watered silk, and behind every hedge and in even- woodland clearing boys have their hands on young girls' breasts or under their bums, and the girls wind their thighs around the young boys' hips and cling to their necks with arms like the boughs of beech trees or poplars and the swallows and white-rumped martins swoop along the rain puddles skimming the water-skin for drink and gnats' eggs, I grow tired of my Virgin's garb, the adulation of the mostly old and feeble that goes with it, and the awed respect of the men I meet. And, anyway, I am bursting out of it as my body returns to its usual shape. It's time to seek a new persona. And maybe Eddie March as well.

I have been of two minds about where to head. Some days I have been pulled to the south by a longing for Eddie, on others I have headed north and west knowing that in that direction lay the place where Prince Harihara's lost brother might be found and to find him might well mean reunion with Ali and the rest. Anyway, I am somewhere towards the north-west of the country, not fir I think from the borderlands between Ingerlond and Gwalia, of which more later, when, in a fertile undulating plain of forest and farmland laced with small rivers, with a castle in the distance on a low hill called Malpas, I spy a young knight pricking down the winding track on the back of a very big orange-coloured gelding. And, to be frank, I feel a sudden urge to have this lad as a surrogate for Eddie. I also have at the back of my mind the thought that if I can get him to get his kit off and maybe take a nap, I might get myself a new disguise.

He's moving slowly, his horse barely ambling, and from the slight rise I am on I can see that shortly he will pass by a mill-pond with a grassy sward starred with daisies on its bank. The mill itself is a ruin, surrounded by willows and rushes and yellow flowers they call flags growing out of the mud around it. Such is the lawlessness of these times many such places set apart from villages, towns or castles have been plundered by wandering bands of robbers, the inmates killed, their gold stolen and often their dwellings fired. Certainly a melancholy that should have served as a warning hangs over the scene, in spite of the healthy-looking sedge and the singing birds.

Moving swiftly, despite flowering brambles and thickets of dogwood, I get to the sward ahead of him and quickly divest myself of my Virgin's robes, crown and all, so that when he comes on to the grass, there I am, sitting beneath a willow, entirely as nature made me, with my knees pulled up and my arms hooked round them, apparently watching the emerald and sapphire dragonflies cruising and copulating over the lotus pads, whose flowers are just on the point of bursting from their glans-shaped cases.

'Oh, shit,' he says, then, 'Holy Mary Mother of God.'

Come on, I think. You cannot be serious. But no, he is not, the statement was an oath not a guess as to my identity. He swung a leg over his pommel and dropped to the ground.

'You're going to disappear, aren't you?' he said. 'Or turn into a wicked old crone? They always do. In the stories.'

Now I can see him I feel a touch disappointed. He's no more than fourteen, and rather plump, with blond almost white hair and a haze of yellow on his upper lip.

'Who?' I ask, still sitting, looking up at him over my shoulder.

'The naked ladies knights come across when they're out questing.'

'Are you a knight? Are you questing?'

'Not a knight. Chaps don't get to be knights until they've done some deed of derring-do. That's in the stories. In real life it's more a case of having forty quid a year and being called to be in Parliament.'

His voice still flukes up every now and then – not a promising sign.

A moment passes. I straighten my knees, lean back on my elbows, let him see my tits. 'I'm not going to disappear. I'm not going to change into anything. I'm not even going to bite. Not hard anyway.' And I shake my hair, now growing back and glossy black again. 'Do you think you could move your horse off a bit? It's attracting a rather nasty son of fly.'

He looks at me. looks at his horse, whose tail is slashing the air behind him and whose withers shudder spasmodically to shift the brutes and, 'Come on, Dobs,' he says, and leads him away to the other side of the lawn where he loops the reins around an alder branch. As he conies back he's already unlacing his jerkin. I stand and give him a hand. Also a full view of what I have on offer.

'This really is real, isn't it?'

'You bet." And I fumble the buckle of his belt, which is heavy with his scabbarded sword.

'I'm John Coombe of Annesbury,' he says. What's your name?' 'You can call me Uma.'

Well, it still is quite small, long, thin, pointed, yet somehow fresh and unused, which is nice, standing up and pinging, and, of course, he's all over me before he's properly in. but at his age he's no shrinking violet and we get where I want to go second time round, and third too. Then I suggest we have a swim in the mill-pond because it's a hot sultry day and by now we are both very sweaty and smeared with misdirected semen. I stay near the edge, squelching the mud between my toes, and give myself a bit of a wash, then I tell him I bet he can't swim to the other side, having it in mind that while he's taking me up on this I can filch his clothes and his horse.

Now. what happens next is something I do not have in mind. I have no idea how treacherous these mill-ponds can be. You see, he can't swim, which I have not properly understood, he's just been wading about pretending to, and being the very young man he is, this is not something he is going to admit. So he wades off towards the other side. A shout, a cry, a gasp, a podgy white arm flailing amongst the lotuses which, even while we've been there, have opened their sixteen petals to welcome the light of their lord the sun into their fragrant hearts, and he's gone.

Sorry.

Still. I had just taken him to heaven and back, introduced him to the goddess within, in a way he would never have managed with the local girls, and, since he was a gentleman, probably saved him from being hacked up by some grown man with an axe. Lots of" people get a far worse deal out of life.

His clothes are not at all a bad fit, and his buttercup-coloured horse is quite happy to take me on board. Together, horse and I, we set off towards Malpas Castle. We have not gone far when, rounding a bend, we come upon what looks like a robbery.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Clearly this is to he a day of chance meetings. Well, every day is, is it not? But meetings of some significance are rarer. What is happening is this. Within a group of four or live people a thin, pale man with a straggly black moustache and a black felt hat with a large brim is pulling his way through a large-leather sack with a drawstring, sorting the contents into two heaps – what he wants to keep and what he does not want to keep. On the keep side is a fair amount of good-quality jewellery and clothes made from expensive stuffs, such as velvet, fine cotton and silk, while on the other side go toiletries, wool, leather, gaberdine and so forth. He is watched by a pale, tired-looking woman, basically handsome but now in a real cow of a rage, dressed in crimson velvet riding gear with gold embroidery, and very fine soft-leather boots. Her blonde hair is pulled up but coming adrift from beneath a velvet cap with a feather. As I come on to the scene she has a riding crop with which she is attempting to slash the pale thin man. but a fat man, his companion, is contriving to hold her back. The final character in the scene is a small boy of about seven years old who is screaming his head off. I know them all.

The pale man is John Clegger, the fat man is Will Bent, the woman is the Queen and the screaming child is her son, if not her husband's, Edward, Prince of Wales. I low did I know who they were? Clearly you have not been paying attention. I came across them all in Coventry, on the day I was taken, and at my trial.

But I, of course, am not Uma the Witch, hut John Coombe of Annesbury, and my horse, Dobs, is not only an unusual yellow in colour but very big. I think they are all more frightened of the hone than of me, although I have managed to get poor John Coombe's sword out of its scabbard and am waving it, as best I can, over them all. I manage to give Clegger a full knock with the flat of it over his ear, which nearly takes off his head and sends him sprawling into the ditch. Yet he gets out of it and is soon running and stumbling through the corn on the other side. Will Bent makes off on the other side.

Madam, of course, since she is a queen, has forgotten me, doesn't know me from Adam. Or Eve. She collects herself, as a queen should, gets back her breath, boxes her son's ear, which he correctly takes as a request to stop his row, and does so, apart from an irritating snivel. Then she draws herself to her full height and gives me a most severe look.

I get the message and get down off Dobs' back.

'Young man, your manners are despicable. Do you not know who I am? Of course you do.'

What am I meant to do? Bow? Fall on my knees? Knock my head on the ground?

I give her a nod and say, 'Glad to have been of service, ma'am,' before I begin to lead Dobs away. Then I stop, gather the reins in my hand, and grasp the pommel, which I can only just reach, as if intending to mount again.

'Stop. What is your name?'

'John Coombe,' I say, remembering.

'Master Coombe, you will take me to Denbigh. In Wales. It lies some thirty miles or so away to the west. I have friends there who will pay you well. Your horse looks big and strong. I will ride in front of you, my son will ride behind you. But first, please pick up the belongings of mine these ruffians, who were meant to be looking after me, were attempting to steal.'

I think about it for a moment. I have a maxim in life that has always, or almost always, stood me in good stead. You may, Mah-Lo, be able to guess what it is. Quite simply – say yes.

Say yes to everything that comes along. I think my tale so far demonstrates how well I follow this maxim. So, although I have no reason to like this woman, or her brat of a son, I say yes. The prospect of payment helps, of course. I have already established that the total of John Coombe's readily negotiable wealth is a sixpenny piece and two farthings.

'All right,' I say, 'but your son can pick up your things.'

She gives that some thought. Then: 'Edward? Do what the young man says.'

I manage to make a cushion from the less expensive of her clothes and strap it on Dobs' crupper. I then give Madam a bunk-up. She sits pertly, in the side-saddle position, and gets a good grip on Dobs' yellow mane. I get up behind her. Then I get off again because Edward can't climb up on his own. I hoist him on to Dobs' back behind the saddle. It's impossible now for me to get between them. I get down again, lift Edward down, pick up her sack, tie it behind the saddle, put Edward on top of it and get up again. We're off.

After five minutes she begins to talk.

'When we heard that vile bastard Warwick was on his way north, Buckingham said it would be best if the King went with him and the army while I and Edward went the other way. That way, if things went badly, they wouldn't get us all in the same net. Not that we expected any such thing. Not only are right and God on our side, we had six very big cannons. God tends to side with the big guns.' We jog on. 'So I went north to Eccleshall, and waited for news. Lord Lovell was the first with them and told us how a rainstorm had rendered the cannons useless, how our army had been beaten, Buckingham killed, and the King taken. So I took horse and, with my two stewards and my son, set off for Denbigh. At Malpas more news reached us. York, the most evil-minded sod of a bastard of the lot of them, was on his way from Ireland and would be made king. Those cretins Clegger and Bent decided to make the best of what now seemed a bad situation by robbing me. And you turned up.'

Not a word of thanks.

We jog… on and on.

I am apprehensive that she will penetrate my disguise. Of course she does. As soon as we have crossed the first brow of a hill and are descending on the further side, Dobs takes it into his head to break into a slow gallop or canter. I am thrown forward. To avoid falling over the horse's ears the Queen forces herself to lean backwards. I let go of the reins and clutch her waist, which is small but strong. Behind us the Prince screams again. Once we are on the level, his mother turns her head a little and brings her cheek close to mine.

'I think, mistress, we should change places.'

I assume my gruffest voice. 'Why should we do that?'

'Because you are a woman. I felt your breasts against my back. And because you do not seem to be properly in control of this beast. Probably, being of low birth, you do not have the art. Anyway, I am taller than you and will be able to see better where we are going than you can with me in front of you.'

So we go through the whole rigmarole again, including, of course, getting the Prince down and up again.

We spend the night in a tiny Welsh inn, three rooms, of which only one is made available to us.

Her Majesty allows me to share it with her and her son, only requiring me to leave the room when she wants to pee in the bucket provided.

'A Commoner,' she says, 'should not see her queen pissing.'

My lowly rank does not preclude her from asking me to pick up the tab. Since Her Majesty has insisted that she and the lad should dine off three brace of skylarks and a couple of quail grilled on skewers over a charcoal fire with strawberries and cream to follow, and a breakfast of hot milk, new-baked wheaten bread and half a dozen coddled eggs, we are lucky that the woman who runs the place (she wears a shawl and a tall conical black hat) professes herself satisfied, just, with sixpence-halfpenny.

I thus learn two important lessons about the rich and powerful. They become rich by never spending their own money. They become powerful by having horses to ride and knowing how to do it.

On the evening of the second day we arrive at Denbigh Castle in the principality of Gwalia or Wales. This is a wild and inhospitable land, peopled with savages much like our mountain and forest tribes. It lies along the western borders of Ingerlond. Denbigh itself is close to Ingerlond and the country is not much different, though bleak, featureless hills with impenetrable woodland in the valleys lie to the west. When we arrive we find Denbigh, or Dinbych, as the Welsh say, to be a small town nestling in the shade of a large castle. The outer wall was a mile in circumference, enclosing the town, with a large, almost palatial keep set in an inner area laid out to terraced gardens. It is occupied by a Welshman, a sort of chieftain, called Owen ap Maredudd ap Tewdyr.

I think 'ap' must mean 'son of.

Forgive me. I have to weep when I think of Owen.

Ah… Hah!

He was six feet tall, had broad shoulders, strong arms, oh, very strong, and legs like trees. His chest was deep and formed like a barrel or a bell. His hair was white, cut short, but with one black lock or streak in the middle. His brows were still for the most part black. His lace was coppery red and his hands too, but his body white as snow. His mouth was broad, and small-toothed, his breath sweet like well-water or milk… All, in their way, marvels, for he was an old man, sixty years old.

Well, well. He welcomes us, he and his children and his children's children, for he is by family tradition and his own history a supporter of the King and Queen's cause. There are good reasons for this, which he tells me when I catechise him about it all.

We are in bed at the time. We spend a lot of time in bed after the Queen has gone to Scotland to raise a new army and I have been there long enough to feel I can express my resentment, well, jealousy, really, of the beautiful girl whose portrait hangs on the wall by the door.

'Ah, me,' he says, in that deep voice of his. Even when he speaks softly it resonates in my ear, which is pressed on the white hairs in the middle of his chest. 'She was the first love of" my life. A king’s daughter and the wife of a king."

'Wife? You are not a king, are you?'

He laughs. 'Who knows what a king is? I am a king in everything but name. She was, look you, the daughter of the mad old King of France and after the big battle there, on St Crispin's Day – I was there, though I was only fifteen years old – the Inglysshe King married her, though she herself was a year younger than I.'

'Which king was that?'

'Henry, though Harry was what he liked to be called.' I frown, trying to work it all out. He senses my puzzlement. 'That's right,' he says. 'The father of the present king.' 'So she, your lover, was his mother. The mother of the present king?'

'That's right too. But King Harry died when she was just twenty-one. Now I had been a page in the King's court, and was by then a squire in her service.'

'And you fell in love?'

'That's right. Of course, they didn't like it one bit. I even went to prison for her after the birth of our son Edmund but in the end they let it stand, let us live as man and wife, so long as we kept out of the way of things. You see, in some ways they were grateful to have the Queen off their hands. She was French, the old wars had started again, as the child king's mother she might have interfered, insisted on being part of the regency, messed up the war effort

'But instead you brought her here and lived happily ever after.' He hears the envy in my voice.

'No. We remained in the south, in or near London, mostly at the palace of Waltham where I was master of her wardrobe. As a mother she continued to look after her son, the King, as well as the children we had together, so we had to stay down there.'

'There were more children?'

'Three more.'

'And then she died. In childbirth?

'No. Of a long and painful illness. The one with claws. Like a crab's.'

'I can cure it. When was that?' 'Twenty… twenty-three years ago.'

I take heart from that hesitation. At least he isn't counting the days.

He sighs a little, then runs his hand through my hair while the other strengthens its clasp round my back, pushing my breasts into his midriff. He answers my questions before I have to ask them.

'You are every bit as lovely as she was. But in a very different way.'

Well, I can see that. The lady in the portrait is fair-skinned, though dark-haired. Later, on my own, I look into her hazel eyes, and kiss her rosebud lips. She was all right, you know? But different.

How does all this begin? You mean this passion shared with Owen ap Maredudd ap Tewdyr?

When we arrive, the Queen, the Prince and I, through the gates of that massive long wall, and ride Dobs up the gravel paths between rosebeds filled with blooms, and past ponds where carp drift in the summer heat, Owen is already there, beneath the keep's portcullis, with his family about him to welcome us. His son Edmund died some four years previously but his daughter-in-law is there with their son Henry, a three-year-old who never knew his father. This son is already an earl, the Earl of Richmond, a title granted his commoner father since his wile was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his third wife. There was, therefore, a connection by blood to the royal family, as well as that by marriage through Katherine of Valois, Henry the Fifth's queen.

This little boy is a serious soul, whom I get to know well in the next few months. He plays most seriously and is advanced for his age-in manner and speech. He also has a certain low cunning, playing off one grown-up against another. His grandfather, my Owen ap Tewdyr, which the English call Tudor, does not much like him, detecting a meanness of nature foreign to the old man's disposition, but says he will go far. Maybe. To go far in Ingerlond, if you are a man, requires only that you should be strong, violent by nature and cruel. This Henry so far displays none of these, save perhaps cruelty, but even then only when it serves his ends. But, as I said, he is cunning.

I'm sorry. You ask how it all begins between me and my Owen. Simple enough. A day soon dawns when it is decided the Queen should go to Scotland whose queen is an old friend and may help her to raise money and an army. While they are all seeing her off, I nip upstairs, take off my man's clothes and get into his bed. Where, an hour or so later, he finds me.

There. That is quite enough for now. Much was happening in the south, which Ali knows far more about than I do. I'll leave him to take up the tale.

Chapter Forty

Actually not. More letters from Prince Harihara to his illustrious cousin, written out in Chamberlain Anish's neat hand, were left out for my perusal.

Dear Cousin

We have been relieved at last, taken out of our palace/prison, and set free. Wonderful! Let me tell you how it happened while it is fresh in my mind. You will remember, if you ever got the letter, that we were still in the Tower, though London was in the hands of the Yorkists, that the main Yorkist army had inarched north under Warwick. Fauconberg and March, leaving two thousand or so under Lord Salisbury, Warwick's father. For three weeks they laid siege to the Tower but without a great deal of effort, being prepared to starve us out. Meanwhile our host, the irascible Lord Scales, continued to hurl cannonballs amongst the houses his guns could reach, to the annoyance and discomfort of the burghers who owned and lived in them.

He boasted loudly that no fire was returned, because if it had been he would have cannonballed the guns aimed at him. But in this he had made one foolish miscalculation: all his guns were sited in the towers that overlooked the city from which he might expect any attack to come. Lord Salisbury, after a fortnight or so, perhaps during which he ascertained that this was indeed so, moved five large cannon across the bridge (the move necessitated the destruction of a row of shops) on to the south bank and thence downriver so they could fire across at the riverside walls from a mere two hundred paces and without any danger to themselves – the guns in the Tower were so securely emplaced they could not be easily or quickly moved.

A lesson for us here – again obvious in its way, but the sort of thing one does not think of until too late: one's guns need protection from the enemy's, but the protection should not be such as to render their redeployment difficult or impossible.

For three days they pounded the riverside walls, which soon began to tumble as they had not been designed to withstand any sort of punishment, and by the fourth day the south wall of the inner keep was exposed. We were now in some danger and certainly suffered severe discomfort from dust, falling masonry and noise. It was not long before the lords who, as I told you in my last, had come with their families for shelter from the Yorkists, now urged Lord Scales to surrender. Since, as I have said, we were also running short of food, this he felt constrained to do, and yesterday evening it was proposed between heralds chosen by each side that this morning there should be a formal handing over of the keys of the great gate. Our chief concern now is that Lord Salisbury will remember and recognise us from our brief sojourn in Calais nearly seven months ago and thus identify us as people sympathetic to the Yorkist cause.

At nightfall, after this had been arranged, Anish and I came upon Sergeant Bardolph Earwicca in the Tower Gardens, drunk and maudlin: his fear was that, having merely done his duty for the King and the King's man, by which he meant Lord Scales, he would now be out of a job, that another, more solidly inclined towards the Yorkists, would be given his place as Under Master Sergeant of Ordnance, and he would end up begging on the streets. Where, if his identity and previous occupation were revealed, he would probably be torn to pieces as the main instrument of the bombardment of the town. Anish, ever quick to see an opportunity, immediately promised him employment in Vijayanagara if he had no objection to travelling some distance. He had no objection for he had lost his wife and three children to the most recent outbreak of plague and was on his own, at which he became maudlin again and began to sob for the loss of the people he referred to as his 'fucking loved ones'.

That he was right to fear the citizens was vindicated, just at that very moment. We heard shouts of anger, the clash of weapons, a howl of rage. Then, over the battered ruins of the riverside fortification, was thrown a head. Ghastly and bleeding though it was, twisted into a grimace of fury and fear, we recognised the face and beard of Lord Scales. Advised of the hatred the people of London now bore him he hail attempted to row himself in a skiff, upriver to Westminster Abbey where he hoped to achieve sanctuary. Apparently, under certain complicated rules compounded by these people's superstitious beliefs regarding holy places, even convicted criminals can escape arrest by entering the chancel of a church. Once inside, their bodies are judged to be inviolate.

Anyway, sundry watermen of the Thames, men whose trade it is to ferry people and goods both across and up and down the stream, recognised him and guessed his plan. They dragged him from his tiny boat, took him to the steps of what is called the Traitors' Gate, for through it traitors are brought to the Tower by boat for execution, and there stabbed and beat him to death before chopping off his head.

I am not sorry he has gone, though I would not have wished him so harsh a departure.

Next day, the eighteenth of july, by their reckoning, Shiva knows what by ours, and we are back in Alderman Dawtrey's house on the corner of the street they call East Cheap. Now that Lord Scales has gone, the Yorkists here are in control and we are identified with the Yorkists, the vintner and his emotional wife are all over us, insisting we should stay until we can find lodgings of our own. They have also kept safe the the goods we hail left unsold, and we still have a fair quantity of gold and jewellery hidden about us, so one way and another our fortunes are well mended.

But there is more than this to tell you. Yesterday, apparently, though no one told us and we were suffering for most of the time from the last hours of the bombardment of the Tower, the Yorkist army returned, having won a great victory ewer the Queen's army at a town called Northampton, where they also took the King prisoner. The King has been lodged in the Bishop's Palace close to Baynard's Castle, which is where the Yorkists stay, a fortification close to Lud's Gate, now a palace. The King, who is frequently disturbed in his head, is quite content to be guided by the Yorkist lords.

All that now remains is for the Duke of York to return from Ireland and assume the reins of government in the name of the King, but in effect on his own account. The thing is, cousin, and I may have mentioned this before, these people have an irrational reverence for a crowned and anointed king, believing superstitiously that to do one harm is to invite the curse of their god. So, although this king is the grandson of a usurper who arranged, so everyone agrees, the death of his rightful king, nevertheless, this one old before his time and subject to grievous fits of madness, is still reckoned to be touched with a sort of holiness, a sanctity.

Finally, a wonderful piece of good fortune: Ali ben Quatar Mayeen was with this Yorkist host, in the company of a Franciscan brother called Peter Marcus, an intelligent and open-minded person tor an Ingerlonder. Ali still has with him the two kurundam crystals I entrusted to him. I'm not sure of what use they are since they are far too valuable to be sold or bartered, but no doubt their time will come. At all events it's good to have him with us again and he seems to be none the worse for his adventures.

The Buddhist monk who left Gove with us seems to have disappeared, as has the fakir. Well, they were just hangers-on, but I feel a certain responsibility for them and I don't like to think of them wandering about this barbarous island on their own.

News just in. These wars are not over yet. The Queen escaped after Northampton and is rumoured to be in Scotland raising an army. Even in Ingerlond she still has many adherents amongst the nobility. They fear to lose the huge gains in land, fortune and position they made under her protection, and also they fear the revenge of Yorkists whose families have suffered at their hands. No doubt we shall see more military activity and learn more from it.

The worst is that we have moved no nearer to finding my brother Jehani, though Brother Peter thinks he may have heard of a person answering his description. However, he advises caution in our attempt to find him. He is almost certainly in the company and under the protection of a secret group called the Brothers of the Free Spirit who are known to preach a free society and look towards a heavenly city on earth where all are free, well fed, equal and happy. Sounds like Vijayanagara. However, to hold to such beliefs is considered heresy and sedition and punishable by a protracted and painful death.

There is a ship in the port of London, chartered by the mercers and bound for Jezair, which the Ingerlonders call Alger, on the north coast of Africa. Alderman Dawtrey has arranged for the master to take this letter thus far. Well, it's a step in the right direction, and who knows?, it might get through to you.

Your affectionate cousin and servant.

Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi

Chapter Forty-One

Dear Cousin

What joy, what bliss! Through what adventures and vicissitudes I suppose we shall never know your letter, sent to me in answer to the one I sent to you from Calais nine months ago, has reached me. It was handed to me this morning by the mate of a cog that had just come in with barrels of a drink they call sack from Jerez in Spain, now in the hands of the Christians but still trading with the Arab port of Motril south of Granada. It has done our hearts immense good to know that four months ago at any rate all was well with you and the City of Victory, that indeed your new Bedu cavalry have had some success over the squadrons of the Bahmani sultans. We are glad, too, to learn that the extensive building programme you had planned before we left is now in hand and going well, and that the dispute with medical practitioners over free public health care has been resolved. Enlightened self-interest usually works.

Since my first letter got through to you I must now assume that the later ones will do so too, so I shall not bore you with a recapitulation of these (though I shall ask Anish to provide a brief summary, just in case) but will instead bring you up to date with what has happened since I wrote to you a month after the summer solstice. Well, the answer for the first couple of months is – not a lot. The seventh, eighth and ninth months would undoubtedly, in this generally rainsoaked and wretched island, be the best for martial enterprises, since the sun achieves a certain warmth and, even after rain, dries the ground quite quickly. However, there is an abundance of new food in the land, first pulses and roots, then grain and fruit, and fodder for animals and the common people are loath to turn out for their lords and indeed many lords are loath to ask them to.

The reason is clear once you realise that these three months provide, in a sudden rich harvest, the food off which the whole nation will feed for the rest of the year, and what is left ungathered will rot in the fields, creating shortages in the coming winter. So although we received a steady trickle of news that the Queen was first in Scotland and then in the north of Ingerlond raising a large army, she made no move on us, and this perhaps because this army was a figment, an unborn entity, a series of promises which, now, in the month they call October, are about to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, here in the south in London, not much has happened of importance either, until the last two weeks or so. The interim was filled with festivity and celebration on the part of Warwick, Fauconberg, Salisbury, March and the rest, much time spent in their absurd tournaments and even more in their absurd mode of hunting, which, as Ali warned us, really does consist of pursuing animals – yes, even foxes – across the countryside on horseback with dogs! When I suggested to these magnates that a more civilised way of proceeding would be to station themselves on the side of a valley with crossbows and have their followers drive previously corralled quarries in front of them within range of their engines, I was laughed at outright – even though I was prepared to use my crossbows to demonstrate what I meant! I know you disapprove of hunting of any sort but you must concede that my method is more civilised than that employed by these Inglysshe.

However, generally speaking we have been treated with courtesy by the Yorkists and allowed to rent a substantial dwelling in a street called Lombard Street (it takes its name from the Milanese merchants who have settled there), hire servants and so forth, and all with the money we can get from selling the precious stones we brought with us. Rubies and pearls are especially valued and sell for prices that would amaze you, especially the former. They have hardly seen true rubies before and cannot believe the brightness of their colour or their hardness. Indeed the King's crown was reputed to have one set in it, very large, which once belonged to the Black Prince, the great-great-grand-uncle of the present king. I was shown this 'ruby', a dull, brownish stone, almost certainly a garnet.

Where was I? Tournaments and hunting. And also a lot of dancing, something, would you believe? the lords and ladies do together rather than watching trained professionals. The result is, as you would expect, a certain lewdness of behaviour that leads to worse, especially when it is compounded with the drinking of vast amounts of alcoholic beverages.

It has not all been pursuits of this sort. During this time the Yorkists, under Warwick, have consolidated their relationship with the City of London, giving the merchants more and more privileges and rights, restoring old ones taken by the Queen, and withdrawing those given, or rather sold, by her to the foreigners who trade here, especially the Germans of the Hanse.

But what of York? Well, nothing, not for three months. This great man, this magnate, this man who had ruled before as Protector during an earlier fit of madness suffered by the King and who, it was said, would be king himself, on whose behalf great men had stirred themselves and many small men have been slain or maimed, remained in Ireland. But a week ago he came at last and. with one throw of the dice, seems to have lost it all.

I have told you how much these superstitious people revere kingship, and what they call the Lord's Anointed. Well, Henry remains King Henry, and Richard Plantagenet remains merely Duke of York, however good his claim to be king. And duke he remains until he is anointed. Yet he came to London with trumpets before him, the sword of state unsheathed in front of him. This is a gigantic, ornamental affair of, again, mystical significance for these strange people. No one will deny, while barbarians exist, the necessity of swords, but to make a revered fetish out of such ugly things bespeaks psychopathology. Worst of all, banners were displayed with the lions and lily flowers that, undifferentiated with any other mark, are the King's alone. Thereby he lost the support of half his followers or more, who, fearing the fires of everlasting torment, would no longer side with him. Indeed this whole business led to a near terminal falling out between York and Warwick…

At this point a page ended and I turned it over on to the pile of those I had already read. As I did so a splash of monsoon rain plopped on the comer furthest from me. I looked up. Ali had arrived by my side, was looking down at me with his one good eye gleaming in his destroyed face against a background of dragon eaves and purple sky. He was rubbing the swollen knuckles of his good hand against the cloth that covered his pigeon chest, while the claw of his left hand endeavoured to scrape bent nails through his ragged goatee beard.

'You've no idea,' he rasped, 'what October was like in Ingerlond.'

And he pulled up a cushioned chair and sat beside me, eye now almost sightless as it looked out across his garden, which seemed to burgeon even more beneath the evening downpour. He was high, high on bhang, I could smell it. He leant into the table between us and, taking a small hashish cake between his thumb and finger, popped it in his mouth. His eye glittered.

He turned over the page of Prince Harihara's dispatch that I had just read, swallowed, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his bad arm. Nodded to himself a little. 'Read it,' he said, 'aloud. I'd like to hear it all through again.' I picked up the next sheet and, returning to the Prince's account, did as he asked.

Warwick and his brother Thomas Neville were actually at our lodging in Lombard Street, buying pearls for his wife Anne. He had a jeweller with him who was picking out what he needed to make a coronet for the Countess, when a squire came banging through the doors demanding to see the Earl.

York, he said, had arrived in Westminster, with a vast retinue, trumpeters and the offensive banners. Since it was known he had been at Abingdon, not far from Oxenford, only two nights earlier, he had not been expected before evening at the earliest.

Well, I was curious to know what this Dukc of York, who had caused so much trouble, was like, so Anish and I. with Ali too, all bundled behind Warwick to Westminster Hall, at the other end of the track called Strand, a distance of a couple of miles or so, and got into Westminster Hall, where Parliament was met, just ahead of the Duke.

I think I told you in an earlier letter that I would explain what Parliament is when an appropriate time came, and this would seem to be it.

Parliament is a large gathering, first, of all of the lords and magnates of the realm, then of the knights of the shires, as they arc called. These are landowners or holders, often chosen by their neighbours, a certain number from each shire or county, and all having a fair amount of wealth, which expressed in terms of income is at least forty pounds a year. Such is the general poverty of the country compared with ours, the buying power of forty pounds is about the equivalent of what a good temple dancer might earn in Vijayanagara, or a holder of a market stall. Yet in Ingerlond it is thought of as a noteworthy fortune. Anyway, these people are gathered together usually once every year by the King to ratify whatever laws he wants to have passed, or taxes raised, and so on. It is rare that any objection is made to what the King wants since those who come have been summoned by the King himself and it all seems something of a waste of time. It dates back. I believe, to customs that were in force and meant something before the Norman invasion four hundred years ago and was a sop to the Inglysshe sensibilities and traditions.

Anyway, Parliament usually assembles at Westminster, where the last but one Inglysshe king before the Normans had built a great hall and a big church, and was now in session, having been summoned under the seal of King Henry, once he had been brought down from Northampton. It had been summoned with the view of ratifying the Protectorship of York and the placement of Yorkist supporters in all the principal posts of government.

The hall has a throne at one end and many handsome windows down the sides. There is also a minstrels' gallery at the back above the large doors and it was there that we were allowed to sit with ambassadors from other lands. Trumpets sounded and in came York, his sword of state still carried in front of him. making his way through the crowd beneath us, straight up to the throne. He stood for a moment, turned, and put his hand on it. The gesture was clearly proprietorial and drew a sort of sigh and moan from all there.

This York, whom we were seeing at last and for the first time, was a big, proud man but already fifty years old or thereabouts, dark hair grizzled, broad-shouldered, large-chested with big hands and strong thighs. But his face was lined, even wrinkled, and his mouth wore an unchanging expression of dissatisfaction. One felt that here was a man capable of almost anything that would not injure his self-esteem to perform. And claiming the throne did not come under that heading.

Clearly he expected applause, acclamation. None came. After that first sigh, like wind through trees, there was silence, scarce broken by the jingle of a spur or a cough.

He took a deep breath. His eyes narrowed. 'Know ye all,' he announced, in a deep, resonant voice, ‘I, as grandnephew of the usurped King Richard the Second and great-grandson of Edward the Third, do challenge and claim the realm of Ingerlond. I propose to be crowned on All Hallows Day coming…'

'When?' I whispered to Ali.

'All Saints' Day, first of November, three weeks' time…'

He might have said more but at that moment a man in gold robes and a strange jewelled hat divided in two as if cloven with an axe, pushed up to York. This turned out to be his brother-in-law Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury.

'Don't you think, Richard, since we already have a king, and we have all, yourself included, made holy vows of allegiance to him, we should have a word with him first before we go through with this? See what he thinks about it?'

This drew a rustle of assent from Parliament.

'I know of no one in the realm who would not come more fitly to me than I to him,' said York. Hut he looked around and took in from the manner and expressions of those in front of him that he had gone too far. 'Well, if that's what you want, take me to the King,' he added, and he marched out of the hall.

We followed as best we could but this time were left behind. But we were told of how King Henry, for once achieving some dignity, faced his cousin down, claiming he was king by right and law and the acclamation of the people, and reminding them all of their oaths of allegiance.

There seemed now to be no solution in sight. Henry was indeed king, though the grandson of a usurper, since he had been anointed, crowned. On the other side. York was descended from an older uncle of Richard than John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was Henry's great-greatgrandfather, though through that older uncle's daughter… It was all very complicated, as you see.

However, Warwick, who was astute and not as hotheaded as York, understood that the lords' and commons' feelings were with Henry, though not with his Queen and government, and the upshot of it all, after a fortnight of wrangling, was that he was able to persuade York to accept for now the governance of the country as Protector but not as king, but with the provision that if Henry died first he, York, would succeed rather than Edward. Prince of Wales, the son of Queen Margaret and possibly of Henry too.

I realise now. dear cousin, that throughout these proceedings, which I have described to you, I have written of the lords and commons as if these were all the lords and commons. They were not. Many lords, many more than had been at the battle of Northampton, were in the north with the Queen and Prince, and most of the knights and common people of the north also sided with her. The Duke of Somerset, he whom we had met at Guisnes in the Pale of Calais, had returned to Exeter in the west and was raising an army too, and all her other supporters were now flocking to the north-east, to Northumberland on the Scottish borders, where she already had an army of twenty thousand. When she heard that her son had been disinherited she became mad with rage. And she is now moving south, encouraging her army to loot and sack all who live on land owned by the Yorkists.

Here in London Parliament has dispersed and most of York's potential army with it. It seems he has lost much support by aiming for the throne, and all fear the Queen. Only his most loyal friends, those who could never expect clemency from the Queen, remain. York says he will go north to fight her, but the opinion is that he will be lucky to raise an army half the size of hers.

Thus, through pride and overvaulting ambition, York has lost what he might have had and is like to lose much more. Some say, even his head.

Dear cousin, believe me, I shall keep you informed of the outcome as soon as it is known.

Your obedient and affectionate cousin,

Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi

I drew breath at last and laid down the last page of Chamberlain Anish's neat, correct script.

'there,' I said. ‘I must say I am all agog to hear what happened next.'

However, a gentle snore told me that Ali was less than eager and had at last succumbed to the blessed relief he sought from the pains and aches that came with the rain. I picked up the next page and began to read once more, silently, to myself.

Chapter Forty-Two

Dear Cousin A fortnight before the winter solstice we left London. Having ascertained that the campaign would take place in the north I decided that we might as well travel with the protection of the Yorkist army as near to Macclesfield Forest as possible in an attempt to get to Jehani's hideout. Thus we would avoid the dangers of highways now given over almost entirely to the depredations of bands of brigands and outlaws.

The case was that, with these civil wars, lawlessness stalked the countryside and, indeed, the smaller towns too. With two monarchs in arms against each other, instead of doing their duty and maintaining order and decency in their realm, lords and lordlings were taking the opportunity to settle old feuds and pursue rival claims for land by means of arms rather than recourse to the law. At the best of times, though, recourse to the courts is always a slow, protracted business in this country, relying not on the wisdom of tried and disinterested judges but an endless parade of lawyers loaded with piles of parchment, Deeds, grants, reversals and titles going back to the Conqueror and even beyond. The result is, more often than not, that the disputed property is wasted in fees before a court, also administered by lawyers, arrives at a decision.

A quicker settlement can be arrived at with a few discharges from blunderbusses and beatings with clubs, and the consequence is that if one is not directly robbed and murdered one may easily be caught up in the cross-fire between rival tending parties.

So, on the ninth of the month they call the tenth, although it is actually the twelfth, we left by Lud's Gate, near the front of an army said to be ten thousand strong but known to be not much more than half that number, travelling at the speed of a team of oxen pulling a large cannon over bad roads. That is, at a slow walk. Need I say it was raining? But now it was a cold, penetrating rain driving in grey curtains across the rolling countryside, or drifting down out of a grey sky.

York rode at the head of this motley band with his son, a handsome young man of seventeen years, known as the Earl of Rutland, at his side, while the rear was under the command of Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury. Warwick himself, with other leading Yorkists, remained in London, ostensibly to ensure that a steady train of supplies would be sent on behind the army, to raise further funds from the merchants (who had already contributed four hundred marks, a considerable sum) but in fact poised to return to Calais should matters not turn out as they wanted them to. The King, too, was kept in London with them, a figurehead symbolising the justness of their cause, though in fact a prisoner in the Tower, in the very rooms we had occupied for so many months.

Eddie March was the exception: he was sent into the borderlands between Wales and England where the Yorkists owned much land and where he was expected to recruit a large army, which would link up with York hopefully before they confronted the horde of Scots and Tynesiders the Queen had collected. These were now moving slowly south, looting, raping, burning as they came and thereby costing the Queen much willing and loyal support. Such was the booty, and the freedom they were given to make off with it, though, that her army steadily increased in size. All those bands of vagabonds and bandits I mentioned just now were happy to join her and thereby legitimise what they were already doing.

Our army, however, for all new recruits joined it daily out of fear of the looming presence of the Queen's and because many were tenants of York himself, remained much the same size or even diminished: the further we got from London the more the original drafts melted away and returned home.

At the solstice we came close to a town called Wakefield and at a distance from it of a mile or so to a huge grey castle, called Sandal Castle, set on a hill amongst woods and fields. This was the very midnight of the year, when, just as at the height of summer the sun dipped below the horizon for a mere five hours or so and the sky remained bright even after it had gone, now the reverse was true. Now it was up for barely five hours, remained low in the sky even at midday, often behind cloud, had no heat in it and left the nights long and impenetrably dark. Being that much further north it was worse than Calais. Though why this should be was beyond me to work out.

Sandal Castle, though huge, with a keep as big or bigger than that of the Tower, could still not accommodate an army of some six thousand. Nor had it been properly provisioned. Nevertheless it was a safe refuge and all York's captains urged him to keep his army within the walls or close up outside them until Eddie March could come to his aid – for aid he needed. The Queen's army now numbered twenty thousand at least. On their side the Queen's captains were desperate to bring him to a fight while they had such a huge advantage.

You will already have gathered from the scenes in London described in my last letter that this York was a wild, uncontrolled, proud man, easily angered, and impatient. Desperate to be king in name as well as fact. Urged to remain within his castle's walls he threw some furniture about and shouted, 'Would you have me shut my gates for fear of a scold? Would you have all men call me a coward and a sot? For they certainly will if I give in to a witch whose only weapons are her nails and her tongue.' Which was irrational, considering that as well as her nails and her tongue she had three times as many men and cannon as he had.

Christmas came, the rime when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. They do this, as indeed we had already seen in Calais twelve months before, by drinking themselves stupid over twelve days, and eating enormous amounts of meat, both of which stimulate the production of choleric humours especially in men sanguine by nature. The Queen played on this. She sent heralds into the castle who taunted York with being afraid of a woman. Meanwhile his victuallers reported that food was running out and, worse still, strong drink, and that the Queen's army lay across his supply lines.

Worse than that, all attempts failed at dealing with the human waste of six thousand men kept within walls. It was not something these Ingerlonders were good at. Quite simply, after seven days of shitting everywhere, there was shit everywhere, freezing and thawing out of doors, gently steaming in corners indoors. Yet, his only hope and best strategy was to stay put and hope March would soon come out of the west with reinforcements.

Then, on the night of the twenty-ninth, while most of the notables were in the castle hall chewing over the stringy carcasses of laying hens slaughtered for the table, there was a sudden clanging of feet from the passages, a timbered nail-studded door was thrown up and a guard of five men surged in with a mud-bespattered but armed knight in their midst wearing a surcoat with a white diagonal cross on a red ground, the arms of the Nevilles, appliqued to it. Hauled to a spot on the floor just below where York was sitting, the following conversation took place.

'My name and style are Arnold Fiennes, knight, and I am of the affinity of Andrew Trollope-'

'He's an arrant traitor,' cried our noble duke. 'Fifteen months ago, at Ludlow, he defected. Bugger off.'

'Not so. Your Grace, he merely put himself in mind of his oath to King Henry. He is mindful now of that oath, and recognising that you are here in the King's name will side with you if tomorrow you will bring forth your power against the Queen.'

'How many men has the old bastard got?'

'Six thousand, Your Grace.'

'Bloody hell, that should do it.'

This Trollope – which, by the way, is a word signifying harlot, so is an odd name for a warrior – was an old man who, when he was only fifteen years old, had fought for King Harry at Agincourt and in many campaigns since; moreover, lie had been captain of Calais for a time. This all led to his harbouring a grudge. He had done so much service for royal masters over so long a period he believed he should have been a lord many times over. But the Normans are so jealous of their blood they are reluctant to ennoble any who may be tainted with Inglyssheness, unless it be in the female line, and so plain Andrew he remained.

York was blinded by pride but not so Brother Peter, who did not think we should allow ourselves to be caught on the losing side. He was all for getting out of it while we were unscathed. At first light, an hour before dawn, he managed to talk us through. Wrapped in our cloaks we passed for burgesses of Wakefield going back to town with orders for food and so forth.

The track from the castle took us across an open stretch of land, known as Wakefield Green, kept in better times as grazing for the castle's cattle and sheep and even those of the common people. It took us down a gentle rise to a river with a bridge then up again, over a distance of half a mile or so, to a low, rounded ridge between two patches of woodland. The river was a brook only, almost dry and what water was in it frozen, easily crossed anywhere but yet an obstacle if one was in a hurry.

There was not a soul in sight as we left the castle by a sallyport a bribed sergeant had opened for us. Behind us the walls and dungeons of the casde rose up through the mist, impregnable and safe – it would take even cannon a week or so to breach them and great expense of powder. In front and around us the meadow was so whitened with frost, which crunched beneath our feet, it put me in mind of the way countrywomen at home spread washed sheets and so forth over bushes to dry.

In the woods the cackling crows rose from their roosts in the crowns of the trees and were answered by the jackdaws in the castle – it was as if the Queen's army had melted away in the night. But as soon as we breasted the ridge we saw this was not so.

Below, stretching back into the countryside, was a vast camp of tents and makeshift shelters made out of bent hazel branches with cloaks and blankets thrown across the hoops. The tents were round and in front of them standards drooped from poles and shields were hung on lances. Brother Peter, whose knowledge was encyclopaedic, had just begun to identify these: 'Somerset,' he began, 'Northumberland. Exeter, Devon and Clifford…' when we were arrested and taken to the Queen's tent.

She was beautiful, yes, but with a hard meanness in her lips, a harsh voice, or a voice made harsh by constantly having to be heard in the company of proud men with few manners. Having heard we were from the castle she was all for taking our heads off there and then but first asked us if we knew the intentions of York.

'Madam.' I said, 'we are travellers in your country and as such have much to be grateful for. We have been received everywhere with kindness and we have been honoured with hospitality from both sides in this sad conflict. It would therefore be invidious of us to…'

Her anger appeared to deepen, although I was speaking with no more ceremony than a prince should. However, at that moment a bishop to whom Brother Peter had been whispering intervened. 'This holy friar,' he said, 'has news that will interest us all. Even as we speak, York, believing Trollope will fight at his side today, is preparing to bring his power on to the field.'

The Queen then turned to her captains, Somerset and Northumberland. 'Sound drum and trumpet," she cried. 'Let the men go to the positions we have already decided upon.'

What we were about to see was the first of four battles that all took place within a quarter of a year of each other. It was the only one where it could be said of one side that a coherent plan had been formed in advance and was more or less adhered to, right from the ruse of persuading York to venture out by Trollope's apparent treachery. Each succeeding engagement was worse than the one before. This one was straightforward slaughter. I have already described to you the ground on which it was fought. As was the custom the Queen's army was divided into three. The central body was commanded by Somerset, with the Queen and her seven-year-old son at his side. Other lords led large bodies of men into the woods on either side of Wakefield Green, by devious routes so their presence was not detected by the Yorkists. Though a flurry of soaring crows might have given them cause to wonder if they had had the eyes of a simple ploughman amongst them. All they could see was a single line of men-at-arms, in hill armour but most unmounted, along the low ridge in front of them.

They came down across the grass, and across the rivulet at the bottom. They formed up, all six thousand in a solid line six deep, with their cannon in front. And still the Queen did not move. Presently three men, fully armed, with squires carrying their battle standards with them, rode out in front of the rest. The Queen's herald, standing near us, interpreted their armorial bearings. 'The royal arms, madam, and the royal arms with a difference. Must be York and his younger son Rutland. And the white saltire on red for a Neville – Salisbury, I suppose.'

'I'm not an idiot. Garter,' she said. 'I've got eyes in my head and, believe it or not, I know the royal arms when I see them.'

York now turned in his saddle, drew his sword and waved it at the troops behind him. The cannon fired once, but firing uphill their shot fell short. They began to move forward, away from the rivulet and uphill.

'All right,' said the Queen, and her eyes were now alight with satisfaction. She was riding side-saddle, a newish fashion, especially designed for ladies, I suppose to protect their private parts from unnecessary chafing, and was dressed in hunting gear, a long crimson velvet gown, black boots. She had on a crown. 'Tell Somerset he can go for it.'

And a page trotted along the line with the message.

And over the top they went, about six thousand, no great numerical advantage, but with the slope in their favour, good ground hardened by the frost but not so hard or slippery as to be a hazard, the lords and knights horsed but scattered throughput the body to provide leadership and rallying points, reined in to a slow trot so the men-at-arms, for the most part in full armour but on foot, could keep up. And just as the two bodies of men clashed the two wings of the Queen's army, with archers in the front on York's right, where they were not protected by their shields held on their left sides, came streaming out of the woods.

York's men would have run. But they had nowhere to run to. Even the castle was cut off from them as Trollope's troops, having come round the back, had already got between them and it. Moreover, no one had thought to raise the drawbridge or lower the portcullis and there was no garrison save potboys and kitchen hands to hold it. It was very soon in Trollope's hands.

York was pulled from his horse and killed almost straight away. Rutland, accompanied by his standard-bearer who was also his tutor, got away and over the bridge across the main river into Wakefield where he was caught by Lord Clifford, who had chased Eddie March out of Alderman Dawtrey's house in London nearly a year earlier. Salisbury, old man though he was, got clear away but Trollope saw him go and sent a troop after him. They caught up with him ten miles away just as he was about to get into another castle – Pontefract, it was called.

The upshot was that next morning, the last day of 1460 by their reckoning, the Queen was presented by Clifford with three heads. 'Madam, your war is done.' he said.

Some say she went white, but not that I saw. She slapped York's cold dead cheek, then ordered them to put a paper crown on him. 'Stick it on a pike and put it above Micklegate Bar at York,' she said, and her voice rang out. 'Let York overlook York.'

Then she paused, her mouth worked, and she spat at it.

Later that day she went over the list of all who had been caught and ordered more executions, beginning what became routine on both sides, the summary murder of all nobles and gentry taken, with their families attainted, that is all their lands and titles forfeit. She pricked the names, marked up on parchment. 'Chop his head off! Get the kids too. if you can. I want to see that one die myself,' and so on. She even extended the lists to include those who took no side and no part: 'For as Jesus said: He that is not with me is against me.'

All this and the battle before it made me wonder: just what is it makes a man get inside so much steel casing, and lumber down a hill to strike and be struck until one or another tails to the ground to be skewered through the interstices of his armour? Or, worse than that, hacked at with mace and axe until the steel casing crushes him? Fear that if he doesn't his lands and life will be forfeit anyway? Maybe. The hope of ransom or loot from a vanquished foe? Loot, perhaps, but not much, for who takes valuables on to a battlefield? And no ransom, not while neither side is taking prisoners. I noted, too, though, a strange sort of camaraderie amongst many of the men, an eagerness to band together and, in their words, 'go for it', coupled with a fear of being thought cowardly or idle by their fellows. Drink too. Both sides drank huge amounts of beer and wine before the battle started. Finally… being Inglysshe helps.

Your affectionate and obedient cousin,

Harihara Kurteishi, Prince of Vijayanagara

Chapter Forty-Three

It's all about contrast, difference, is it not?' Uma murmured. For next day she was back with us again. Her gentle but knowing eyes were unfocused by the power of memory. She sighed. 'He was the best, you know.'

Contrast and difference. Let's begin at the top and work down. His short white hair that I run my fingertips through and that strange black streak just long enough for me to wind once round my finger: my hair, almost back to its fullest length now, dark but hennaed to a red with occasional wires of bright gold in it and glossy, silky, fragrant. His chin and cheek, bristly with white above the coppery red, against mine, which has the bloom and colour of a ripe peach. His breath a touch sharp, like milk on the turn: mine like currants and honey. The squareness of his chin and the roundness of mine; the sinews and wrinkles in his neck – well, I have those now, but then… My shoulders creamy and smooth, rounded yet delicate: his twice as broad and white, with, I have to say, red spots to match the mole or two I have. My breasts like pomegranates, but soft and with large nipples that corrugate at his touch and even leak a sweet drop of ichor; his, massively wide and flat with nipples like pimples, which yet my tongue can raise so they feel hard as grain, and a mat of iron hair between. His anus like the roots of the banyan, strong and sturdy yet capable of grace in their slow yet greedy grasp; mine like the smooth branches of a tall aspen tree. My stomach a shallow dome with a whorled dent in the middle where Parvati pressed her thumb: his hard and six times ridged with muscle.

He has short, strong white toes that, even so, can grip a coin or feather while mine are long, with, when I can get the lacquer, painted nails. His ankles are finer than I would expect, which indicates nobility, but not as fine as mine, which put him in mind, he says, of things as fragile as glass. His calves are twin cords of muscle hazed with hair brindled grey and brown like a cat, and his knees, which he grumbles about at times, but nothing like as often as Ali does, are broad and strong, mine smooth like butter but as firm as apples. His thighs are pillars to support a temple, his buttocks like twin coconuts in a palm-tree; mine are like the mangoes he's never seen.

And our fingers, his short for the width of his big hands but strong with square ends, mine long and thin – what secret joys they find where thighs and torsos meet! His thumb runs down the crease and curves to cup the mound of bone, they part the wiry hair and probe the puckered lips; my thumb and forefinger ring the root of his prick while the other three roll his balls in their wrinkled sack. We play on each other as if on musical instruments smoothing the mucus between the pads on our fingers, teasing the tissue until his strengthens like timber and mine swells like a grape.

And now breath is taken by beauty, beauty of doing not seeing, of tasting and smelling and softly caressing. The longing now is nostalgia for a past that never yet happened, and I pull myself close to him, releasing his sex so I can hold his head and force my tongue and kisses on his neck and mouth, while he rolls us round and with one hand beneath me, in the small of my back, feeling out the cleft between my buttocks and with the other feeding his hungry pillar into me sends tides of hot joy up from my…

Well. Ali. You and I did it a couple of times, so you know what I'm on about, and you won't mind if I tell you that this Welsh chieftain knew what he was doing, was the best.

Summer drifts into autumn. Here the Welsh hills, which were a dull russet, slowly become lilac-coloured and then purple, spread with tiny bell-like flowers, so many millions of them it's like a

purple blanket and springy and soft so that with care, avoiding the bigger branches that hug the ground, one can lie on it and lose oneself in the sweet but light fragrance of it, gazing up into a blue like aquamarine and watch where eagles soar with necks collared in gold. And beneath these low bushes yet another bush hides from the snows and wind that howl across here in winter, blowing line powdery drifts, but now rich with small black berries, black that is until Owen names them: then you see how they're really blue, a deepest indigo.

These hills are cleft and riven with valleys so narrow near the crests you don't really see them until the hillside suddenly fills away beneath your feet to brown rock and water clear as crystal but brown, too, from the gravel beneath or grey and flat where the water has rounded boulders through the millennia, bubbling and gurgling from pool to pool. Deep in these declivities the air is still and the sun hot. With our ponies grazing on the ridge above us (they'll move and maybe neigh if anyone approaches), we can strip off our woollen cloaks and trousers and, on cropped thyme-scented grass beside the stream, make love again, and yet again, or just lie in each other's arms, backs against a sun-warmed lichened rock and watch the brown fish browse the moss beneath the surface.

At such times Owen feeds my head with tales of ancient Wales such as those of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, and Branwen, daughter of Llyr and I tell him the tale of Rama and Sita. Then he sings the love-songs and laments of Dafydd ap Gwilym and Dafydd Nanmor, who, he says, is a living bard and may one day come himself to Dinbych to sing to us. And I teach him the lore of Parvati, the mother of us all, and Kali too with her necklace of skulls, whose avatars I sometimes am, and he calls her Rhiannon, who is both virgin mother and mare-headed eater of human flesh.

The frosts come, and then, as I hinted, the snow and gales sweep in out of the grey sea we sometimes glimpse from the higher hills. Wolves howl amongst the sheep-pens and one day early in December we ride out with great grey hounds, long-limbed so the snow is no problem for them, with massive necks as strong, I say, as Owen's. We take no wolves but drive them deeper and deeper and higher and higher into the mountains, seeing them always streaking ahead of us, loping and lolloping up almost vertical

steeps, then silhouetted against the darkening sky, three of them, to howl their praise at the moon and defiance at us below, freezing in a shepherd's hut beside a black tarn. But there's wood stored there, and candles too, and the five of us, for Owen has brought three huntsmen with him, dine off biscuit and salt-dried mutton, before sleeping beneath the fleece of a bear.

Christmas conies, which Owen and his clan or tribe celebrate with some solemnity.

Mah-Lo, you will have understood how in those climes far to the north of us and even of your own country, the steady decline of the sun towards the winter solstice is a matter of some significance. All people who live in those climes hope and trust that sooner or later it will be halted and when it is, when by fine calculation, based on careful observation of the sun in relation to tall stones set in circles like giant teeth on hill-tops for this very purpose, they can assert with certainty that the sun has risen at a point a little to the left of where it rose the day before and sets a little to the right, they declare that the goddess has conceived and borne a son, which they call Adonis or Adonai".

On that day, out of the hills and woods came priests called druids, not Christian. Their leader bears mistletoe, and they enact certain rituals using drums made from oak, which simulate thunder. The leader carries the ancient sword shaped like a sickle and made of gold with which he cut the mistletoe and with which he now guards it.

He personates in flesh and blood the great god of the sky who has come down in the lightning flash to dwell among men in the mistletoe, the thunder-besom, that grows on the sacred oaks in the deepest valleys of Gwalia, by the side of black and fathomless tarns. The goddess whom he serves and marries is no other than the Queen of Heaven… for she, too, loves the solitude of the woods and the lonely hills, and sailing overhead on clear nights in the likeness of the silver moon, looks down with pleasure on her own fair image reflected on the calm, the burnished surface of the lake, Diana's mirror.

Here, in this country-, we call them Shiva and Devi or Parvati. Thus with due solemnity, and joy, too, the marriage of the gods is celebrated and the birth of the sun, the new year, and the hope of lambs born, barley and rye in the sheltered valleys and fleshy salmon flashing silver up the rivers and streams.

Hut that year, before the twelve days are done, news comes that fills me with foreboding, though Owen says it is good, of the Queen's great victory at Wakefield and the death of York and his son Rutland.

'A nest of vipers has been rooted out,' my lover cries in his deep voice, like an organ. 'Maybe we can now live in peace.'

But as winter deepens, the couriers who gallop up to his gates carry reports and commands as bad as winter itself and most especially bad are those carried by his son.

One day, when we are riding down a long winding valley, under the rowan trees, which still bear the odd berry, not all have been stripped by the birds Owen calls redwings, he comes. No snow now – as always happens on this island it lasted a week and then melted away – but frost again and the ice crackling in the puddles beneath the ponies' hoofs. A couple of red. fork-tailed kites circle in the updraught from a shepherd's croft, wondering if a quick drop on a dead sheep nearby is worth the risk from a mountain cat that's crouched under a boulder with an overhang nearby. And I'm riding in front. Owen is the only man I've ever met who'll let me do that), when I see a couple of men breaking away from the castle wall a mile away, and coming at a steady gallop up the track towards us. Both in half-armour, the one behind carrying a standard – presumably that of the one in front.

I rein in, let Owen come alongside. His broad forehead furrows and he pushes that black lock back. Of course it falls forward again.

'Shit,' he says.

And he lets out a quick sigh, his shoulders sink, and his hands, holding the reins, drop on to the pommel. I sense some life has Leaked out of him and I feel ineffably sad. This man is old enough to be my grandfather, just; he is, well, an old man. As old men do he finds the bad moments, when they come, more and more difficult to cope with.

'What's the matter? Who are they?'

'It's my son. My younger son, Jasper.' You should be glad to see him."

'Of course, yes. But he's been raising the Welsh and the men of the borders for the Queen. He can only be here for one reason.' 'He wants you to join him.' 'Just so.'

The two riders come up with us, wheel, a clatter of metal on metal and this Jasper, whom I haven't seen before, reaches out of the saddle to embrace his father and shake his hand. He looks a little like Owen but fairer, and I can see in his eyes those of Catherine of Valois, whose portrait I have already described to you.

'This is Uma,' Owen says. 'A princess from India.'

I am about to make a disclaimer but catch a look from him. He wants to scotch the rumour that in his dotage he has taken up with a gypsy.

Jasper touches the top rim of his helmet. 'Ma'am,' he says, which is nice, but that's all I get from him.

‘I know why you're here,' says Owen, and it's a tired sort of growl.

'York's at Shrewsbury gathering an army out of the west of Ingerlond. He already has twenty thousand. When he has thirty and as soon as the roads dry out, he'll move on London. There's been a lot of rain in the south. If he gets there and links up with Warwick they'll have the beating of the Queen. Especially as they still have the King in their hands and can say they have his support.'

Well, even at the time I fidget at this and wonder, as no doubt you are too, but they're well into men's talk now as they turn their horses back down the track towards the castle.

'Where is the Queen?'

'After Wakefield she left her army at Hull while she went back north to Berwick-on-Tweed, which they say she'll give to Queen Mary of Scotland in return for more troops and funds. But even with these she and her captains doubt she has the beating of Warwick and York together."

Again I frown but they ignore me. Owen rides on ten paces past a giant yew that spreads its ancient shade, wide as a banyan, over the dry needles and fallen berries beneath it. These berries are cherry red but small, and hide a poisonous black seed in a tiny but fleshy cup. You can squeeze the seed up and it brings with it a colourless ooze like the bead you get on the tip of a… Ah, well, it's a sad time I'm on my way to, I'm trying not to push on too quick from the happy times.

Owen rides on past the yew then turns to his son.

'So. She wants us to raise a power and get to London before York can.'

'That's it.'

At last I get a word in edgeways.

'But York, and his son, were killed at Wakefield and their heads placed on the gate at the city of York. That's what you told me.'

'He had another son. Older than Rutland.' It's Jasper who answers me. 'And though attainted he calls himself the new Duke of York. Duke and king too.'

'So,' says Owen. 'It's come to that at last.'

Candlemas. The day when the year in the north quickens. They take all the candles they will need in the church for the next twelve months and bless them, but really it's for the goddess whom they call St Bride. In the cottages they make straw dolls of her and lay them in a bed and burn candles round her all night. But that Candlemas was ruled not by St Bride, or Parvati, Deva or Uma, for in the evening of the day following the night of Candlemas, in a town called Hereford, they take poor Owen out into the market square. Poor soul, he cannot believe they will execute him. He has led his men for the Queen in the King's name. Surely that queen whose life I saved is Kali incarnate, a true avatar, dragging the deaths of thousands in her train.

Owen's crime, apart from leading an army against this second York, at a battle a few miles north of Hereford, and losing it, is that he is the stepfather of King Henry. An eye for an eye, is what the obscene scriptures of both Christians and Muslims call for, and so it is a case of a father for a father.

Others taken with him, including two young lads, go first and one lad breaks free. The soldiers hack him to pieces, as if he is a steer in the shambles.

Owen turns to the headsman and says, 'I trust you will not handle me so roughly. You have an axe and a block.'

Then they tear off the collar of his red velvet doublet and placing his head on the block he says, 'This head was wont to lie in more than one queen's lap.'

Later, when they have gone. I take up his head and place it on the top step of the market cross and with three ladies of the town I gather up a hundred candles from the church and we place them on the steps around him. I wipe the blood from his face and kiss his cold lips. The air sparkles with frost, and the candles burn all night. As the late dawn streaks the sky with red I feel the presence of another behind me as I sit on the bottom step. The candles, now burnt low, gutter with the first breeze of morning and the smell of beeswax soured by heat drifts about us.

I look up and round and see a tall figure in full armour, blue steel enriched with gold inlay. Behind him two squires carry two shields. On one are blazoned silver flowers on lapis, quartered with golden lions on a field of blood. On the other there are three gold-leaf suns, freshly laid on gesso and burnished to a brightness that catches the light. I have heard the story of the battle at Mortimer's Cross. I have heard how three suns appeared in the sky above the man who would be king and both armies took it as a sign that Cod was on his side.

He lifts his visor. It's Eddie. Eddie March. Edward Plantagenet, King of England, Duke of York. Behind him, the great black stallion I once saved from a whipping strikes sparks from the cobbles and neighs like a trumpet.

Chapter Forty-Four

She sighed deeply, dabbed her eyes with a scrap of muslin.

'I'll go for a little walk, if you don't mind. The rain has almost stopped. Ali will tell you what, in the meantime, he had been up to…'

The day after the battle of Wakefield we found that, in the general business around us, we were ignored. Prince Harihara remained determined to push on towards Macclesfield Forest, which now lay some fifty miles south-west but, of course, with the destruction of York's army we no longer had the protection a prudent traveller would want in those lawless roads. The Queen herself was heading back to the north-east to recruit more help and troops from the Scottish Queen, while her main army celebrated its victory and showed no immediate will to move south or north. Nevertheless, the Prince felt we should never be so near our goal again and instructed me to find a guide who would take us those last sixteen or seventeen leagues.

Brother Peter found a small Franciscan friary not far from the cathedral. Its prior directed us to the home of a cobbler, whose sympathy with the Brothers of the Free Spirit went beyond even that of the friars. Setting aside his lasts, needles, leathers, hammers and other tools of his trade, this worthy man cheerfully agreed to take us on. He declared himself especially happy to, for his trade was scarce worth carrying on at that time of year with the short days and the expense of good candles. No doubt the sight of the Prince's gold played its part too. But what gave the enterprise point and us great encouragement was that, on seeing our complexions, he asserted that he had heard some time ago that a man with just such a skin had been living with the brothers in Macclesfield Forest and was an object of some curiosity amongst the simpler people who lived thereabout. How long ago?

Oh, three or four years ago, maybe more.

This shoe-mender's name was Edwin. Although by nature cheery he lived alone, had sober habits, was industrious and frugal. His father, a travelling mason, had worked on the rebuilding of the cathedral (still, twenty years later, in progress), married, then almost immediately died after falling from the clerestory, which they were modernising, when a piece of wooden scaffold broke. His mother's brother was a cobbler and to him Edwin was apprenticed when still a boy. He had never married, being much attached to his widowed mother, but studied alone and mastered the art of reading. He had read the gospels in a Wycliffite translation that was copied and passed underground, as it were, amongst the weavers of Wakefield, who were among his clients.

Here, and not for the first or last time, I felt a sudden sense of comradeship, of companionship. I mentioned this to Brother Peter.

'I call such people.' he said, 'the Johnson family."

'Why?'

'It's a common, anonymous name, yet it suggests a sort of toughness, an independence, with a decent ordinariness too. Not all of them are Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, but many are. They pay no respect to authority, whether secular or religious, but quietly, keeping themselves to themselves, go their own way.'

He meditated for a moment, then went on. 'A Johnson minds his own business, but he will help you when help is needed. He doesn't stand by while someone is drowning, or trapped under a fallen tree or piece of masonry. The Johnsons know good and evil are in conflict and the outcome is uncertain. But the conflict is not eternal since one or the other must win the final victory. The question is: Which side are you on?'

The last stage of our pilgrimage was wretched, crossing a low range of hills known as the Pennines. Being the first weeks of the year the weather was cold and wet, the days short, the nights interminably long. Wet and cold, we came down the western slopes of those hills into rain driving out of the west and into a small town called Manchester. I can remember hardly anything of the place except that whatever it is makes joints swell and ache when rain comes took hold there. As I shivered in the corner of a tavern where we stopped for the night Brother Peter and Edwin argued with each other over whether the best footie players came from the west or the east side of the Pennines. For two intelligent men, one very learned, it seemed a stupid dispute to get into, but I was too miserable to care.

We were now less than a day's walk from Macclesfield Forest, and Prince Harihara was agitated at the prospect of arriving there, alternately pacing about the public room with excitement lighting his eyes, or sitting in the comer, morose and anxious over what the morrow would bring. Anish, having made sure that we had dry bedding and had eaten and drunk enough, sat beside me. 'Tomorrow,' he said, 'we should be through. Mission accomplished. Whatever happens, we should be able to turn south at last and head for home. How long will it take us, Ali? Tell me, not as long as it took us to get here.'

He stretched out his still podgy hands to the fire, turned and beamed at me. 'I can't wait to get back,' he added. 'Still, we've seen a lot. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds. And all arising from that bundle of parchment you brought with you from Calais to Vijayanagara.'

That stirred my interest. 'Do you have it about you?' I asked.

'It's upstairs in our room. I'll get it.'

He was back in a moment, undoing the red leather strings, folding out the creaky parchment.

As John the apostel hit syy with sight

I syye that cyty of gret renoun

Jerusalem so nwe and ryally dyght

As hit was lyght fro the heven adoun

The birgh was al of brende golde bright

As glemande glas buniist broun

With gentyl gemmes anunder pyght

Wyth banteles twelve of tiche tenoun

Uch tabclment was a serlypcs ston…

Ali must have noted the puzzlement on my face

.

For you, Mah-Lo, let me put it into a tongue you can understand,' he said

.

As John to each of these jewels gave name

I reckon each stone from his narration.

Jasper was the name of the first gem

I saw adorning the base foundation;

It glimmered green on the lowest tier.

On the second step, sapphire was seen,

Then chalcedony, stainless and clear,

On the third step showed with pallid sheen,

The fourth was emerald with hue of green;

The sardonyx was the fifth stone

And the sixth was ruby, as it was seen

In the apocalyse, by the Apostle John…

Ali's eyes grew misty. 'I am remembering,' he said, 'the first time I read these words. In the courtyard, was it? Or the hall, in Vijayanagara. With the Prince. What a lot we saw and did following that day.' He sighed. 'In Manchester, opening out the pages, I said much the same to Anish after I had read the third verse.'

And John yet counted the chrysolite,

The seventh stone on the tiered plinth.

The eighth was beryl, clear and white.

And topaz inlaid with twin hues ninth;

The tenth, chysoprase, firmly fixed,

And gentle jacinth the eleventh stone.

The purple and indigo amethyst

Cure of all woes, made the twelfth zone…

'You know, Anish,' I remarked, when I had read these verses,

in that Mancunian inn, with the- rain splashing outside, and a howl of cold wind in the chimney, ‘I can't believe that a heavenly city, like the one described here, lies twelve miles away.'

Anish frowned, peered at the Teluga script, which appeared below the Inglysshe verses. 'There's no suggestion,' he said, 'that the place described here is in Ingerlond.'

I was nonplussed. 'Why are we here, then?' I asked at last.

Anish was puzzled. 'To find Jehani and bring him home.'

'And?'

'And to learn as much as we can about military matters from the most warlike people on earth so we may defend ourselves against the Bahmani sultans.'

I took a turn about that gloomy low-ceilinged room, partly hoping to ease the pain in my knees, partly to give myself time to think. I tripped over the stretched-out ankles of a drunk as I did so.

'Mind where yer at, yer silly bogger,' he growled.

Returned to where I had started, I stared down at Anish, who had now sat himself in a settle with the package on his knees.

'But not to discover the heavenly city made manifest on earth?' I asked.

'Why should citizens of Vijayanagara want to seek a heavenly city?'

He had a good point there, I conceded to myself, if not to him. Man comes to himself only when transcendence has been conquered – when eternity has become present in the here and now. Those had been Peter's words in his Easter sermon. At that moment he was dozing in the inglenook.

'So why did Jehani write out these English verses if not to point us in the direction of a city where we can shovel up precious stones by the sackful?'

Anish frowned, possibly put out by the slightly belligerent, not to say sarcastic, tone I was adopting. Perhaps the beer, of which I'd had a pint or three (I'm afraid by then I was quite addicted to the stuff), was talking. The landlord's own. Boddington, his name was. It was on the sign outside. Anish glanced down again at the part written in Teluga, the language of the Dravidian princes and their entourages, a closed book to me.

'He says he came upon them in a rather beautiful poem written by a man whose daughter died. She appeared to him in a dream and showed him this city, which the poem describes. It made Jehani feel homesick, made him long for Vijayanagara again.'

Brother Peter stirred, leant across him. 'The poet was a knight,' he said, 'but also a Brother of the free Spirit, or at least a Lollard, and these verses are an adaptation of Wycliffe's translation of the last book of the Bible.'

Anish went on with some reproof in his voice. 'I don't see why any sane man would want to shovel precious stones into a sack."

'No?' said I.

'No. Precious stones should adorn dancers. Men and women. Even buildings and statues. As they do in Vijayanagara.'

'You forget. I am not a native of that city. I'm a traveller, And sometimes, for travellers, it is convenient to have precious stones in sacks.'

He had the grace to acknowledge then that we could not have come so far. had warm clothes to wear and the wherewithal to buy food and drink, and a more or less dry bed for almost every night, had we not, at my suggestion, brought a large number of jewels with us. In sacks.

At this point Prince Harihara, who had been watching us from a draughty corner near the door, his face in shadows, his dark eyes gleaming, called out: 'That's enough, Anish. And you, too, Ali. We'll discover all we need to know soon enough."

And he asked Boddington for a candle to light our way to bed.

So. No heavenly city. No jewels beyond the dreams of avarice littering the streets. What did we find? First, a river called the Mersey, across which we took a ferry, then a forest, with a glade in its centre. At the ferry Edwin left us. It was dangerous, said the ferryman, for a poor man with no education to be found anywhere near where the Brothers of the Free Spirit had lived. Had lived? Gerald, the ferryman, looked grim but would not respond to our questions.

Forests, to be satisfactory, require management. So said a forester who appeared on the other side of the river and agreed to take us further. He was a big man, one of the biggest I have seen, with a red curly beard and a merry eye.

Old and rotting trees need to be taken out; rides created, which will also, in dry summers, act as fire-breaks; thickets allowed to grow for deer to shelter in and the roe deer especially, who are secretive, to have their young – some birds, too, prefer thickets to trees for their nests. Streams should be banked or encouraged, where the lie of the land suggests it, to form ponds and stocked with fish. Macclesfield Forest, like so much of the rest of Ingerlond, had been neglected for twenty years or more, due to the wars, both foreign and civil. Rides and paths were overgrown, brambles and briars had filled them, and the fallen trees had been left to rot. But in the heart of winter none of this was too much of a problem – the briars were reduced to coils of thorny stems, the grass was withered and the leaves dropped from the saplings as well as the giants so one could see one's way clear and, from the occasional rises, across extensive views. All this was explained by the forester as he led us to the centre.

It rained, but not as heavily as it had in Manchester the day before. More a gentle mist, a healing rain, the forester called it. Not only tall, he was well-built too, dressed in green, with a longbow, and a horn on his belt. Brother Peter teasingly called him Robin Hood, and had his head bitten off for his pains. The gear was pretty standard for a forester was the message we got. From the pommel of his saddle there swung a large axe, its blade sheathed in leather. It didn't seem unreasonable for a forester to carry an axe but Peter muttered something on the lines that if he wasn't Robin Hood then he must be the Green Giant, whose head was struck off with his own axe by Sir Gawain at the court of King Arthur.

At this point the forester reined in and pointed down from the low escarpment we had arrived on across a wide valley, an almost perfectly circular bowl, about a mile across. And even in winter it was evident that here things grew with a floridness, a burgeoning, a freshness and greenness different from the rest of the forest.

'Some call it the Garden of Eden," he said, 'others the Garden of Earthly Delights. But most follow the Church and Bishop and call it the Devil's Bowl. Fifty years ago, or thereabouts, a ball of fire dropped out of heaven. The earth shook. A fire raged through this part of the old forest for a week. And when the smoke cleared and the fire died down, there was this great hollow in the land like an upturned palm. All the people were terrified of it, and no one would go into it. Within a year or so, though, it began to green up again, first just mosses and heath, but then the trees came back and, of course, because the people were afraid of the area, all species that are hunted came into it and bred undisturbed, perhaps as they really did in paradise. There are deer, of course, and hares, wild boar, pheasants and partridge, orioles and magpies, and in the river that runs through it otters, beavers, trout, crayfish and, in early summer, salmon. And all are bigger and more handsome than any you will see elsewhere. And also a wider variety of plants – not just the forest ones but apple, pear and cherry, too, currants, raspberries and strawberries all took hold before the big forest trees like the oak, the ash, the beech could cover all with life-denying shade. And flowers, of course: aconites which you may find in bloom already on the forest floor, do not eat them they are poisonous, then celandines, wind-anemones, primroses, snowdrops, and violets, daffodils, Solomon's seal, borages, worts of all sorts, wild garlic and many, many more. It's a shame you cannot see it in May or June…' He pulled up and looked around at us. 'You will find the Brothers' dwellings as near to the centre as you can get.'

'And the Brothers?' cried Prince Harihara, his face pale with foreboding.

But the green man had already turned his horse's head and was making his way back down the outer slope of what we now realised was a rim, very like that of a shallow bowl. As he went, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and a shower of raindrops as clear as stainless shards of chalcedony fell about his shoulders. Then he was gone.

Chapter Forty-Five

A bare half-mile down a track that had been wide and over-arched with beech, but was now encroached upon by holly and butcher's broom, took us to the centre. On the way red squirrels chattered from the boughs and dropped nut-casings on our heads. A red fox trotted by. We crossed a stream that ran between banks of red clay and a robin redbreast sang on a willow twig above it. I recalled aloud that red is the colour of death, but pushed the thought away when none of my companions found an answer.

When we arrived in it there was no doubting we were there. First a hedge or ring of holly, much of it heavy still with red berries, twenty yards or so across, enclosed a wide swathe of grass, a lawn cropped by deer and rabbits to less than an inch but even in January thick and lush. This in turn made a ring round a low fence of wicker hurdles many of which, untended, had fallen or been pushed down. Inside this circle there was a tiny village of about ten stone huts roofed with turf, though again most had been tumbled by malice or time. In the very middle a round hut stood, bigger than the rest, and apart from a hole or two in the roof where the turf hail fallen through, more or less intact.

In the huts and the tiny passages between them we counted fifteen skeletons or cadavers, including eight who were young: babies, small children, older children. Skeletons? Not quite. Although the beasts of the forest had eaten out the hearts, lungs and livers, and the birds had attacked their eyes and smaller parts, the summer heat had dried what was left and patches of skin still clung to their heads, and hair too. Some had been decapitated but most had been stabbed with spears or slashed and hacked with swords or axes.

There was no sign to suggest that any had been other than naked. Four still held in their hands single roses, dried and withered now, no doubt cut before they were attacked or perhaps when they knew they were about to be attacked, to be offered to their assailants. These had been plucked from the gardens, overgrown now, of course, we found on the far side of the settlement.

The larger hut in the middle seemed to be a blank, a circular wall with no door or windows. We walked round it. Brother Peter mumbled and sighed, and stumbled on the dressed stones that lay in his way. Tears streamed down Anish's plump cheeks. Prince Harihara looked angry to the core of his being, his lips tight, his fists clenched, his complexion white, his eyes burning. I paused to consider how I felt. Well. I have seen such things too often since I was left for dead at the top of a well Stuffed with the bodies of my parents and siblings. I felt numb. And my knees and knuckles hurt.

One thing I felt sure of. I knew the signs. When men kill tor power, prestige, or out of greed or hunger, even for revenge or to punish, you feel there is an imperative there that is natural, even rational, that has come from something deep in our natures. It means something. Even for the victims. They know why they have died. But the cruellest, stupidest, meanest and most horrible murders, murders preceded by rape, living dismemberment, come from a hatred that has only one root and that innately meaningless and trivial, unnatural and irrational. Religion. These people, like my own people, had chosen the wrong god.

Why should this be? If you live a life that is mean and ignoble, impoverished and filled with crippling labour that enriches others not yourself, as long as there are masters and men. your only hope is to be rewarded in heaven. And if your neighbour's heaven is not your heaven, his god is not your god, then one ot you must be wrong. And what is even worse is if he believes, as these people had, that there is no god at all… That is unthinkable, unacceptable. In his head lies the possibility that it might be you who has been deceived, so crush his head with all the venom…

'Ali, I know you're not feeling well, but could you give us a hand with this?'

The Prince – even then courteous, certain as ever of getting his way. 'This' was a large flat stone, somewhere between the shape of a square and an egg, one foot thick at the edges but nearly three-feet thick in the centre and six feet high. It seemed likely it served as a door but its base had sunk into the turf and it took the four of us an hour to shift it.

'Does it have to be moved?' I grumbled, after the first twenty minutes of useless heaving and pushing.

'My brother is not out here so he may be inside.'

He was right.

The stone shifted at last. The hut breathed out – a musty, dry smell, faintly aromatic. The cold light flooded in, joined the sunbeam that was already there, thanks to the hole in the roof, a patch of almost lemon-yellow light on the curving, undressed stone. Four sparrows flew out, also through the hole in the roof, and a tabby cat, a queen, snarled and spat before launching herself up from the lap she had been sitting in.

There were seven of them, sitting in a circle, ankles crossed, hands, palms upturned, in front of them. None of them wore clothes though all, three women and four men, were dressed: in tiaras and necklaces, arm bangles and wrist bangles, girdles and anklets, made from twisted lead and copper, now tarnished with time, but still set with crystals, felspars, yellow, white, red or green. Some were opalescent like moonstones, others, like sun-stone, spangled. Each had a simple handleless tin cup in front of their feet. Presently Peter picked one up. There was a smear of dried-up purply black residue, a paste, in the bottom. He sniffed at it.

'A concoction of extracted and concentrated belladonna, aconite and hemlock,' he said. "The dehydrating effect and spasmed muscles could account for the fact that they have remained upright in depositions they adopted before drinking it. Though they would have had to resist the onset of considerable if brief pain to remain as they are.'

But Prince Harihara did not hear him. He was on his knees in front of one of the figures, with his face in his hands, rocking soundlessly to and fro. Although the skin of all these dead had withered and browned with time, this one was perceptibly darker than the rest. And although the faces of all shared the same rictus of death and the same effects of mummification by poison, heat, cold and dryness, the Prince could no doubt detect in the mask in front of him the physiognomy of his younger brother. Besides, as we had been warned to expect, his legs had been removed at the knee joints.

In the centre of this ghastly circle there had been placed the one object of monetary value to be found in the whole settlement: a gold bowl, very thin, embossed with a crude oak-leaf pattern. When we had left and had found it possible to talk of what we had seen, Anish offered the supposition that this was the Holy Grail, believed by many Christians to be hidden in these islands. But Peter said no. It was much older that Christianity, he said. Similar objects had been found in long barrows all over the country.

Anyway, this one had held water, now dried up, and two flowers, a lotus, or water-lily, and a rose. But they were withered too, dried up and dead. We rolled the stone back, leaving Jehani where he had chosen to be, then led the Prince away. He did not speak for forty-eight hours, but when he did he seemed himself again, though his mouth retained a melancholy downward twist at the corners for as long as I knew him.

Our mission now done, we headed south. Peter was anxious to return to Osney, the rest of us to London and a ship to take us east, back to the Orient. We had not gone far before we met up with a troop of men led by a knight who was marching on the command of his liege lord to Shrewsbury where the King was gathering an army. The King? Henry? No, Edward, son of the Duke of York, Edward the Fourth.

On the way Prince Harihara catechised Brother Peter about what we had seen, about what had happened to his brother and why.

Although he expected or at any rate hoped to be back in Vijayanagara as quickly as any letter, he wrote it all down for his cousin. In fact we were delayed further, as you shall hear, and the letter reached its destination a month ahead of us. Here it is.

Chapter Forty-Six

Dear Cousin I have sad news to report. We found the body of Jehani, my brother and your cousin, in a bidden settlement. He had been dead for at least two years, possibly three, and was entombed with six of his friends. His place of rest was decent enough and reflected the life he had been leading and the beliefs he held so we felt it appropriate to leave him, undisturbed, where he was, simply sealing up the tomb again behind us.

Although nothing can be certain we have, with the aid of a wise man who knows about such things, pieced together a picture of Jehani's last months or even years.

It seems likely that apart from his death, and the earlier mutilation he had suffered, he had been happy and this must be our consolation, though it cannot wipe out the guilt I feel that it was my stupid jealousy that sent him on his travels in the first place. However, I must believe that the happiness he found here was at least as deep and ennobling as that I made him forsake in Vijayanagara.

He was in the company of a small group belonging to a sect called the Brothers of the Free Spirit. This sect exists in secret cells across the west, some of which have managed to find places in the wilderness where they can live undisturbed according to their beliefs and without interference from the authorities – for a time at least.

Ali tells me that the Assassins, whose founding father was Hassan Ibn Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, and the Thuggees, too, share some of their characteristics, the difference being that the Assassins and Thuggees both pay an excessive and obsessive attention to the experience of death. The Brothers, however, see it as part of the natural order and as such to be welcomed when its arrival is timely.

I shall now summarise the main tenets of their faith, if that is the right word, expressed through praxis rather than dogma.

They hold all in common; there is no private property. Women are the equal of men. Where the climate is suitable or the time of year conducive, they go naked of clothes but not of personal ornament. They practise singing, dancing, story-telling and poetry, and they play on musical instruments. They eat simply and eschew animal flesh except at times of the year they hold holy. They use hallucinatory plants such as various mushrooms, hashish and other substances. They believe in a god, or a goddess, but it is the god or goddess within them they seek to discover, not an alien entity. They eschew all violence, even in self-defence. They do not tell others what to do and they do not expect others to tell them what to do. They condemn no activity or behaviour that brings pleasure and does not harm others. To avoid conflict, division into parties, power struggles and the like, they limit their numbers in any one group to twenty or so people. Out of these, seven or so of the older members form a council who take decisions for the whole group.

Such were the people Jehani lived amongst. My informant tells me that he may have lost his lower legs as a result of torture by crushing before he was taken in by these people. He may have been tortured because he was already identified as a Brother of the Free Spirit, or simply because he was a stranger with skin darker than those around him,

There is much we shall never know about him for certain, we can only guess.

He lived, in some comfort, with all a rational man could wish for, in a small settlement hidden in a forest, in a part of a forest where ordinary people were afraid to go since it had been the site, some fifty years earlier, of a meteoric impact. The Ingerlonders believe such occurrences come from the Devil, who, in their cosmology, is the spirit of evil. However, hidden away though they were, it seems likely that the authorities became aware of their existence and most of the group were murdered by soldiers, probably sent by the Bishop, the spiritual authority in the area. The elders however, including Jehani, were able to seal, or have themselves sealed, within their largest building where they took their own lives by means of herbal poisons.

These are the facts as well as we know them. Much more could be said, but little that is worth saying and nothing that will bring him back. We are now on our way home.

Your affectionate and obedient, but grieving cousin,

Prince Harihara