Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

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."