Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Ali went on, 'Look, Mah-Lo, how my finger joints are swollen. My knees appear no different from normal, I grant you, but believe me, they burn inside with terrible pains, and up here in the hollow of my thigh, it is like a sword-thrust. If it was not for the hashish you brought me yesterday I would be dead or mad…"

And he thrust a ball of the oily resin, as big as the egg of a quail, which he had been rolling between his palms, the warped left one on lop of the sound right, on to the charcoal glowing in the howl of his nargileh before sucking on the mouthpiece as if his life depended on it. As well it might, for all I knew. His sanity anyway. The rich sweet vegetable smoke, cooled by the rosewater through which it had been bubbled, billowed around us. Breathing it in passively, I settled back to enjoy the mild euphoria it provoked, which somehow went well, as far as I was concerned, with the cosy drumming of the rain, the damp warmth, the early darkness of the cloud-filled sky, and presently the steady drone of my companion's old voice.

That last letter of the Prince's has taken us on three months or so. We must retrace our steps in the sands of time, back to Easter, and the day after Peter gave his sermon, the day I set forth again on my short walk through Middle Ingerlond.

It started to rain even before I hail got to the wicket gate and by the time I was through it it was pouring. I damn near turned back. I did turn back. And what did I see but my friend now of several months not waving me goodbye from the dry safety of the door-keeper's lodge, but stumbling down the gravel towards me. He took me by the elbow and steered me straight on along the way I was about to go, up on to the main road that passed by the walls of Oxcnford leaving them on the further side of the brown, swirling, pockmarked water. In his left hand he held a large soft leather bag with handles.

'Forgive me, Ali.' he cried, 'it was boorish of me to send you off like that. Let me come some of the way with you.'

We splashed on through puddles and over ruts, and presently the rain eased a little, the sun warmed our backs, which steamed gently, and a rainbow appeared over to the right, blessing the bleak prison-like dwellings of scholars and clerics with a brief promise of something better. I have to say I felt happy to be on the road: it was three months since I had set foot outside the Osney priory and, pleasant and welcoming though it had been, I was ready to see new faces and new places. As you know, dear Mah-Lo, my wandering life has, until now, but rarely allowed me to spend more than a month or so in one place, and I still get restless, even now when rest is all I need, rest for these aching bones. Which, let me say, are feeling a lot better now. This is good blow you brought me, much better than the local stuff.

'Genuine Moon-disc from the Mountains of the Moon,' I said. 'There was a boat came in yesterday from the Gulf ‘

'The real thing, then.'

And his eyes went dreamy – possibly he has remembering the years he had spent in his youth amongst the Assassins of the Hindu Kush, at the feet of the fakirs who followed Hassan Ibn Sabbah and took bhang for inspiration. Then he took a deep puff, shook his head, grinned lopsidedly, and went on.

Presently we came to a parting of the ways, a crossroads in fact. One path led to a bridge and back to the city, another straight on to the north towards, the signs said, Banbury and Coventry, while the one to the right indicated Burford.

'The Burford road,' said Peter, setting down the leather bag he was carrying, 'for the north west. Burford is an interesting place.'

I fully expected him to leave me now, having set me on the right road, but again he took my elbow, picked up the bag and went with me, looking up at me with almost childish mischief in his eyes.

'We are, you know, a preaching order, a mendicant order, and I have dallied too long in the comfort of the cloister. I feel ready to get out now, preach a bit, see a few new faces, pass on some of the fruits of a winter spent in contemplation and hard study. And watching you go, knowing I'd miss you, I thought, if then, why not now? And look…' he loosened the drawstring on the bag, which was black '… I've brought with me what I could lay my hands on in the moment I had of Roger's writings.'

He pulled up four small books of parchment, bound in leathered boards. He gave the pages a flick. The writing was minuscule.

'All in code,' he added, 'but I've cracked it.'

What followed was not what I intended. We spent far too long walking and talking, many weeks, in fact, in pleasant companionship, with a little hardship but not much. Though I tried to urge-on him that my objective was a conventicle of the Brothers of the Free Spirit, which he himself had told me might be near a place called Macclesfield or Manchester. Brother Peter was in no hurry to be anywhere in particular. And, after all, Prince Jehani was Prince Harihara's brother not mine, and for as long as I believed Harihara to be in prison, there was little point in me trying to find Jehani.

We begged for food (neither of us had with us more than our staff and the clothes we stood up in) and always we got more than we needed. Occasionally Peter gave sermons on street corners, at market crosses, in churchyards or out in the countryside away from the reach of authority or law. His congregations rarely numbered more than a score or so, but equally he was never forced to resort to the expediencies of his mentor, the founder of his order, and preach to the birds. We slept in barns, lazar houses, and occasionally the beds of widows.

The countryside greened up, the ditches filled with flowers, and I soon forgot that the trees had been leafless. Apple trees blossomed, then pears, the meadows filled with small flowers called buttercups, which sheeted them with yellow, and the woods rang with birdsong, especially that of the two-noted cuckoo that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. In the gifts people brought us, soft sour cheeses and cream figured often, eggs, too, and fresh young roots and cresses. The duck eggs were especially good.

For the most part Peter preached a message that was not as brave or far-reaching as that he had been inspired with at Easter, but spoke straightforwardly of the blessings of poverty, sharing, owning things communally. He attacked the priesthood and the Normans for stealing from the working people and he condemned superstition, greed, luxurious living, indolence, warfare and so on, and he used, from memory, the Bible in Inglysshe as a text, the translation of John Wycliffe. He always eyed his listeners with a cunning eye, and tempered his message to those who were there: thus if he saw a constable or a reeve he praised the King and the secular law, if there was a poor priest he praised his poverty but if there was a rich one around, a canon or even an abbot, he came quickly to a conclusion and we moved on.

More interesting were the long talks we had as we covered the ground from one village to the next.

'Let us agree between ourselves,' he said, quite early on, and even though we were alone, walking through an oak forest whose boughs were laced with brilliant yellowish fresh green, which he-had pointed out was not leaves but green flowers, he looked over his shoulder and into the holly thickets, to check there was no one in hearing, 'that God is a meaningless concept. We have no need of him…' 'Or her?'

'Indeed, of her either…' and here he rocked with laughter. 'What a wag you are, Ali. but quite right too. Why shouldn't we call God a woman? Since we're agreed she probably does not exist at all she might just as well be female!'

'You were saying we have no need of her…'

'Save perhaps as First Mover. Something must have kicked the whole thing going, but once started then cause and effect takeover, and she could push off to whatever other universes she has an interest in. Granted that, it becomes fascinating, does it not, to speculate on how cause and effect might have put together a chain of Being that resulted in so many diffuse and different species as we see around us? And perhaps to guess what amongst them were the first originals from which the rest came.'