Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'How should this be?'

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

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

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

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