Knowing a criticism to be hid within these bland assurances, my ire begins to rise, and I press further on this selfsame tack.
‘If I have asked, you may be sure it matters. If you be in truth unwitting of such business, why, then I shall be amused to hear your witless thoughts. Now put off your delays and answer plainly: what are your opinions of a church built in a round?’
She shifts upon her chair, and I am pleased to see she is discomfited. Become less certain in her insolence she does not meet my eye, and in her speech I fancy that I hear a trembling, absent hitherto.
‘There are some who might say, my Lord, that it was a configuration not hospitable to Christian worship.’ Here she swallows and pretends to lose herself in study of the Heathen angels raised upon my casket’s lid. Turned to the side there is still beauty in her face. It comes to me that were I yet equipped to plough her she would not raise such a fury in me, at which thought the fury doubles.
‘Do you think I care a fart what some might say? The counsel I am seeking is your own, and I shall have of it for all your damned evasions! Let the ignorant hold that my works do not well suit their low-born Christianity, still shall I hear what you would say in this!’
Brief silence from her now that is much like the rolling of a drum, in that it has the same air of anticipation.
‘My Lord, you force me to admit I must agree with those that say these things.’
I rise up from the bed where I am sat and, clinging to its foot-boards lurch towards her so that she shrinks back.
‘What do you know? What do you know of Christianity, of its antiquities? Come! You shall come with me to view my church this instant, that I may instruct you to a proper sensibility!’
She starts at this.
‘My Lord, it is too dark. I cannot venture out with you this night, when it is sure to rain.’
I take a further step towards her, one hand gripped yet on the foot-boards of my bed and hear the thunder crashing in my heart.
‘By God, were we made sure of Armageddon on this e’en, yet would I see you do my will in this! Get up!’
Now she is weeping, furious because she knows that she may not gainsay me. Wet-ringed eyes spit venom, and without much thought of it I find that I am rubbing with the hard heel of my palm against my loins, the old thing in me come awake to find such passion in her. When she speaks her voice is rough and hateful, like a cockatrice. I know that she would strike me if she dared.
‘I will not! Drag yourself through storms to gloat on your misshapen relic if you will, but I’ll not come with you!’
Risking my balance I let go the bed and topple forward, catching at her chair-back with my hands so that I come to rest propped over her, gripping the chair on each side of her arms, my face pressed not a hand’s width from her own. Speaking, I see the white froth of my spittle fleck against her hollowed cheek where she has turned her face away, eyes wrinkled tight.
‘Then I shall drag you by the hair, or have men do it for me! Shall I make you bare and thrash you? Shall I?’
Defeated now, she shakes her head; takes small hiccuping breaths, gulped deep into that narrow chest, snail-path of snot upon her upper lip. I let the silence simmer for a moment, wherein nothing save my breathing may be heard, then, lifting up to stand beside her with one hand still on the back-piece of her chair, I call to John.
When he appears, his pallor and timidity are such that he must surely have been listening, beyond the chamber door. He glances to the Lady Maud, who turns her face away from him so that her discomposure might not be in evidence, and then he looks to me.
‘My Lord?’
I bid him summon men at arms and next deliver Lady Maud and I to horse, saying that we are wont to visit church and would that he make company with us and with our mounted yeomen. He seems puzzled and afraid, and gives a glance of silent question to the Lady Maud, who will not look at him, and so he bows and makes away, and all is done according with my will.
At length, we quit the castle by its bridge-side gate, with Maud still weeping as she rides beside me, while John and the men at arms stare straight ahead, affecting not to notice this. The rain that stripes the dark is thin and spiteful, does not quite remove a scent of distant woodsmoke lingering upon the air, and when I ask as to the source of this, my squire reminds me that this is the night the villeins light the bel-fires that they drive their cattle in between to make them proof against disease. As we ascend from cross-roads up to horse-fayre I can see the sky a hellish red behind St Peter’s crumbled spire, that marks where such a fire has been assembled on the green towards that church’s rear. Much merry-making can be heard come from this quarter as we ride our horses by and on towards the street of Jews.
Upon the threshold of those teeming Semite hovels we break left and so begin our weary and prolonged ascent of that steep path that runs from the horse marketplace, up to the outskirts of the boroughs and the sheep-track just beyond, where is my church in its inchoate state.
The reek of fire is everywhere upon the wind, so that I cannot but recall the smell of older fires, in older darknesses. The fire where I first sat and talked with Saint-Omer; the fire we built our camp about that next night, after riding with Saint-Omer’s strange-garbed company a day. Sat there about the burning brushwood’s hurried and imprudent blaze, I quizzed him further on the claims that he and young Hugues had made when last we spoke. The foresaid Master Payens was not present on this new occasion, having gone with several of his fellows to a spot remote from where we camped, for purpose of some service or observances peculiar to their order.
Crouched beside me, face made brazen by the flames, Saint-Omer made again his boast that with his order he should rise until they were made rich beyond the dreams of Avarice, with influence to beggar Alexander’s. Urging me to join my cause with theirs, he promised all who stood beside them at the outset should come into greatness and reward, when they at last laid claim to their inheritance.
‘As you shall see, my Lord of Saint-Liz, though our rise may be assured, there are yet certain preparations to be made that would assist us greatly when we come at last to power. Our form of worship, as an instance, makes requirement that we gather in a circle, such as is not easily accomplished in the common style of church. We shall therefore need churches raised across the world according to our own design, these fashioned after Solomon’s great temple in Jerusalem.’
He paused here with significance, as if to make me plainly understand the offer he extended: should I aid his venture by the building of a novel church then would I be repaid a hundredfold when his new order’s hour was come about. I shook my head in heavy protest.
‘By my faith, Lord Godefroi, I should need more than air and promises e’er I was made enthusiastic for such ventures. Though I doubt not your intentions, how is this great wealth of which you speak to be achieved? Whence is this awful power to come?’
He turned towards me, half his face in flame, the rest in darkness, and he smiled. ‘Why, from His Holiness the Pope. I have no doubt Rome’s coffers will prove adequate to our demands.’
Seeing the speechless, blank discomfiture with which I greeted this announcement, he pressed on, while in the deserts all about us devils sang through insect throats.
‘It is as my Lord of Payens said when too filled with wine to be discreet: we have a mystery in us. We have a secret hid within our order not a few would soonest were not made instead a revelation. But to say more, I must have your pledge of silence. Further to this, I must have assurance that if this great knowledge is made plain to you, and having seen yourself the means by which we shall make good our boasts, then shall you build for us the place of worship that I have described.’
I thought upon this for a time, and at last gave assent, reasoning that if Saint-Omer did not make good his promise that I should be satisfied by that which was revealed, then I should likewise not be bound to carry out his last conditions. Having sworn an oath of silence, I
enquired when I might be at last made privy to the great concerns of which he hinted.
‘Why, upon this very Sabbath night, should you desire.’
I frowned here, having lost all notion out amongst those timeless sands of month, or week, or day. Was it in truth the Sabbath?
Saint-Omer continued in his speech without regard for my confusions. ‘Even now, the young Lord of Payens and all my fellow knights are gathered at a place not far from here, where they make preparation and await my coming that their service may be thus commenced. If you would go there in my company, then all that I have said shall have its proof.’
Decided thus, we rose up from the halo of the fireside and excused ourselves before commencing on our trudge across the dunes to where Saint-Omer said his comrades were retired. My leg was not so bad then as it has become of late, yet still I hung upon Saint-Omer’s arm as we went wading through the dust, the same encumbering dust that slows my legs in ghastly dreams of flight I’ve lately suffered.
Overhead, the quantity of stars was frightful; that vast multitude of ancient silver eyes that saw so many generations come to dust, and never blinked, much less allowed a tear, and as we laboured through the cooling drifts I asked Saint-Omer when his order would attain the station they foresaw.
‘Five years,’ he answered, adding, ‘if not five, then ten,’ as if it were the merest afterthought. Since then I have learned, with some bitterness, that if not ten, then fifteen would suffice; or if not fifteen, why, then twenty. As I climbed those showering, sliding mounds with Godefroi Saint-Omer on that distant night, I was as if lulled by the beetle-choirs, and did not think to ask of such eventualities.
Besides, we were by then come high atop a ridge, the slopes of which fell down before us to an even plain, where there were lights; a ring of candle-flames that stuttered in the darkness, with another ring alike, save smaller, set there at its centre. In the circled track between these fiery boundaries, pale figures moved in slow procession, from where came an oceanic murmuring that was resolved into a mournful plain-chant as we stumbled further down the hill towards the candles and the circling, singing knights. The inner round of flame was set about a flat stone called to service as a makeshift altar. Something rested there upon it I could not make out, beyond the squinting stars of brightness dancing on the wicks that hemmed it round. We lurched downhill towards the glow, Saint-Omer and myself, and as we went the air about was filled with hideous, hurtling blossom: monstrous desert insects headed for their brilliant, brief extinction in the candle-flames. Heedless, with Saint-Omer leading me on, I could but follow their example. Mournful voices lifted up and we went down, and we went down . . .
The rain that beats now hard against my cheek is like the fluttering insect carcasses that beat against it then. Beneath our party’s hoofs the green and fibred smears of horses’ shit give way to hard black jewels of dung, whereby it is made plain that we have reached the sheep-track, where the matted, tick-infested herds are brought from Wales. Maud stops her weeping for a time as we descend, although her cheeks are wet, but this may be the rain.
A blackness that appears more present and more solid rises now atop a hillock to our right, against the paler dark behind. It is my half-made church, its eight great piers reared up towards the churned miasma of the heavens. Signalling to John and to the solemn men at arms, I reach across and take the bridle of Maud’s horse, reining us both outside the low stone wall that binds the church-land’s lowest edge. It looms above us, incomplete and yet suggestive of its final gravity, as we are aided by our yeomen to dismount and climb the wet grass slope towards it. From the shadow comes a dreadful bleating and the scattering of bone-shod feet, so that Maud cries out in alarm, but it is nothing, only sheep that graze the pasture here and crop the weeds about the church.
I take Maud’s arm in such a grip she winces, hanging on her to support myself as I step nearer to the ring of piers that soar up massively into the starless dark towards their rounded, many-scalloped capitals. Between the eight great columns now the yawning chasm of the open crypt comes into view, where rough stone steps lead down into the rain-stirred mud, and though she shrinks away I draw Maud to the very edge, so that we stand between the piers, on which I lean and find support.
Now Maud renews her weeping, and as I look back to where my squire and men at arms stand at some small remove behind, I see that they are also disconcerted, whether by the hulking church or by my manner I know not. I shout, that I am heard above the bluster of the wind and sizzle of the rain, gesturing to the oblong-cut foundations and half-built walls of the chancellery that lie upon the far side of the gaping vault.
‘There! Do you see? That shall be the Martyrium, that represents the Passion of our Lord, whereas these vaults, once closed, shall signify the cave wherein he lay, there at Gethsemane. Come! Come down to them with me. I shall show you . . .’
Here, and with a throttled cry, Maud breaks away from me and runs back from the crater’s pillared rim to where John and the men at arms stand dumb-struck, pausing there to turn and stare at me, her eyes wide and afraid, her pointed chin now quivering like a compass needle fixed upon my North. I rail at her and at the men who stand there idly by yet make no move to drag her back to me.
‘What? Are you made afraid by this mere shell, this mere anatomy that is not yet a church? How much more frightened should you be to see its spire! If you will not come with me to the vaults, then damn you, for I go alone!’
I half expect at this that John might move to my assistance, but he merely stands beside his Lady Maud and gazes at me in a trance of fear alike to hers. Cursing them both I turn and, gripping on those stones that jut out from the vault’s completed walls, I make my slow way down the moss-slicked stairs. With one leg dragging, I descend into the mystery.
Back in the desert we came down upon those circling knights, Saint-Omer and myself, that we could hear their song more plainly as they trudged in their great ring above an altar rimmed with candles. In their tuneless moanings now and then I heard the blessed name of Jesu, so that I became assured there was no Devilry attendant on their ritual. We stepped across the outer ring of candles, and at our approach the chanting knights fell back to let us pass on to the inner ring of lights, and to that altar which they guarded.
Nearing to it, Saint-Omer stooped low to whisper in my ear, his words plain even though we were amidst the chanting of his brothers. ‘Do you see, My Lord of Saint-Liz? Do you see the face of our Baphomet; of our praised one before whom the nations of the earth shall surely bow? Look closer.’
There, beyond the winking flames . . .
I stand now in the slime made by the rain here in the lidless vault of my unfinished church. Above me, peering from between the columns, are the faces of my yeomen and the Lady Maud, who have with trembling step come to the edge, that they might view me better in my ravings.
Though the fierce rain pools within the sockets of mine eyes I lift my face towards them as I bellow. ‘Here! Here is the cave in which Christ slept, while up above me in the nave’s great round shall be the symbol of his resurrection . . .’
Of his resurrection. Standing with Saint-Omer there beside me I leaned forward, squinting so that I may see beyond the ring of lighted candle-stems to what sat there upon the rough stone altar in their midst. Ringing about us in their vests of ghostly white with bloody cross upon the breast of each, the knights were singing, Jesu, Jesu . . .
Clinging to the crypt’s dank walls for purchase, I begin to hobble round the great stone ring, hauling my lame foot through the deep brown puddles, shouting as I go. ‘You think, alike with fools, that this is blasphemy, this Holy circularity? Why, if you knew what I had seen . . .’
It lay upon the altar, and its skin was black and shrivelled up with age. Those hairs that yet clinged to the scalp or chin were long and silver, glistening in the light of star and candle.
‘There,’ came Saint-Omer’s breath beside my ear. ‘There. Do you see???
?
The eyes had been stitched tight, and there remained a strange, unreadable expression in the corner of the mouth, there where the lips had sagged and come unsewn. It was a head, but whose I might not guess, that was expected to reduce all Popes and Potentates to merest servitude.
‘There,’ said Saint-Omer. ‘Do you see?’
I splash on in my lumbering circuit of the vault, and yet the words I shout have no more sense in them than there is in the spit and crackle of a villein’s bel-fire. I am weeping, stumbling, roaring, while from up above the frozen masks of Maud and John and all the startled yeomen hang there, staring down at me, my judges.
‘I am old and almost in my grave, and still they make no move! They have no care for me! They will achieve their kingdom only after I am gone, so that there shall be no reward for me, not here, nor yet in any other life! If you knew what I know . . .’
I knew whose was the head. It came to me with such a force and certainty I stumbled back, as if the sands beneath my feet might of a sudden open up and plunge me straight to Hell.
‘There,’ said Saint-Omer. ‘Do you see?’
I slip, and fall down cursing in the mud. Still neither men nor Maud make any move to aid me. I am weeping as I drag myself upon my knees about the crypt, hanging upon the stones that jut from the uneven brick to pull me half erect.
I gazed in mortal terror at the head, whose features seemed to jerk and twitch their shadows in the candle-light. Then it was all a lie, all the Crusadings and the Christenings alike. The central stone on which faith rests was pulled away from me, and in its stead was left this hateful relic, mummified and black, that seemed to fix me with its catgut-threaded stare; that seemed to twist the untied corner of its mouth into an awful smile. I shall be dead, and nothing shall be left of me but worm and bone. I shall be wiped away, be absent in the endless and insensate dark where no thought comes. I shall not rise into the nave of rebirth, echoing with angel voices, and no more shall any of us, for the Heavens are become an empty place and dead men do not rise, nor push back stones. Our souls know no ascent, nor have they final destination.