Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

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

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

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

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

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

'You do?'

'You're following the signs.'

'What signs?'

'The little red hearts.'

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

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

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

'Nothing is true," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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