Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Why should this be? If you live a life that is mean and ignoble, impoverished and filled with crippling labour that enriches others not yourself, as long as there are masters and men. your only hope is to be rewarded in heaven. And if your neighbour's heaven is not your heaven, his god is not your god, then one ot you must be wrong. And what is even worse is if he believes, as these people had, that there is no god at all… That is unthinkable, unacceptable. In his head lies the possibility that it might be you who has been deceived, so crush his head with all the venom…

'Ali, I know you're not feeling well, but could you give us a hand with this?'

The Prince – even then courteous, certain as ever of getting his way. 'This' was a large flat stone, somewhere between the shape of a square and an egg, one foot thick at the edges but nearly three-feet thick in the centre and six feet high. It seemed likely it served as a door but its base had sunk into the turf and it took the four of us an hour to shift it.

'Does it have to be moved?' I grumbled, after the first twenty minutes of useless heaving and pushing.

'My brother is not out here so he may be inside.'

He was right.

The stone shifted at last. The hut breathed out – a musty, dry smell, faintly aromatic. The cold light flooded in, joined the sunbeam that was already there, thanks to the hole in the roof, a patch of almost lemon-yellow light on the curving, undressed stone. Four sparrows flew out, also through the hole in the roof, and a tabby cat, a queen, snarled and spat before launching herself up from the lap she had been sitting in.

There were seven of them, sitting in a circle, ankles crossed, hands, palms upturned, in front of them. None of them wore clothes though all, three women and four men, were dressed: in tiaras and necklaces, arm bangles and wrist bangles, girdles and anklets, made from twisted lead and copper, now tarnished with time, but still set with crystals, felspars, yellow, white, red or green. Some were opalescent like moonstones, others, like sun-stone, spangled. Each had a simple handleless tin cup in front of their feet. Presently Peter picked one up. There was a smear of dried-up purply black residue, a paste, in the bottom. He sniffed at it.

'A concoction of extracted and concentrated belladonna, aconite and hemlock,' he said. "The dehydrating effect and spasmed muscles could account for the fact that they have remained upright in depositions they adopted before drinking it. Though they would have had to resist the onset of considerable if brief pain to remain as they are.'

But Prince Harihara did not hear him. He was on his knees in front of one of the figures, with his face in his hands, rocking soundlessly to and fro. Although the skin of all these dead had withered and browned with time, this one was perceptibly darker than the rest. And although the faces of all shared the same rictus of death and the same effects of mummification by poison, heat, cold and dryness, the Prince could no doubt detect in the mask in front of him the physiognomy of his younger brother. Besides, as we had been warned to expect, his legs had been removed at the knee joints.

In the centre of this ghastly circle there had been placed the one object of monetary value to be found in the whole settlement: a gold bowl, very thin, embossed with a crude oak-leaf pattern. When we had left and had found it possible to talk of what we had seen, Anish offered the supposition that this was the Holy Grail, believed by many Christians to be hidden in these islands. But Peter said no. It was much older that Christianity, he said. Similar objects had been found in long barrows all over the country.

Anyway, this one had held water, now dried up, and two flowers, a lotus, or water-lily, and a rose. But they were withered too, dried up and dead. We rolled the stone back, leaving Jehani where he had chosen to be, then led the Prince away. He did not speak for forty-eight hours, but when he did he seemed himself again, though his mouth retained a melancholy downward twist at the corners for as long as I knew him.

Our mission now done, we headed south. Peter was anxious to return to Osney, the rest of us to London and a ship to take us east, back to the Orient. We had not gone far before we met up with a troop of men led by a knight who was marching on the command of his liege lord to Shrewsbury where the King was gathering an army. The King? Henry? No, Edward, son of the Duke of York, Edward the Fourth.

On the way Prince Harihara catechised Brother Peter about what we had seen, about what had happened to his brother and why.

Although he expected or at any rate hoped to be back in Vijayanagara as quickly as any letter, he wrote it all down for his cousin. In fact we were delayed further, as you shall hear, and the letter reached its destination a month ahead of us. Here it is.

Dear Cousin I have sad news to report. We found the body of Jehani, my brother and your cousin, in a bidden settlement. He had been dead for at least two years, possibly three, and was entombed with six of his friends. His place of rest was decent enough and reflected the life he had been leading and the beliefs he held so we felt it appropriate to leave him, undisturbed, where he was, simply sealing up the tomb again behind us.

Although nothing can be certain we have, with the aid of a wise man who knows about such things, pieced together a picture of Jehani's last months or even years.

It seems likely that apart from his death, and the earlier mutilation he had suffered, he had been happy and this must be our consolation, though it cannot wipe out the guilt I feel that it was my stupid jealousy that sent him on his travels in the first place. However, I must believe that the happiness he found here was at least as deep and ennobling as that I made him forsake in Vijayanagara.

He was in the company of a small group belonging to a sect called the Brothers of the Free Spirit. This sect exists in secret cells across the west, some of which have managed to find places in the wilderness where they can live undisturbed according to their beliefs and without interference from the authorities – for a time at least.

Ali tells me that the Assassins, whose founding father was Hassan Ibn Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, and the Thuggees, too, share some of their characteristics, the difference being that the Assassins and Thuggees both pay an excessive and obsessive attention to the experience of death. The Brothers, however, see it as part of the natural order and as such to be welcomed when its arrival is timely.

I shall now summarise the main tenets of their faith, if that is the right word, expressed through praxis rather than dogma.

They hold all in common; there is no private property. Women are the equal of men. Where the climate is suitable or the time of year conducive, they go naked of clothes but not of personal ornament. They practise singing, dancing, story-telling and poetry, and they play on musical instruments. They eat simply and eschew animal flesh except at times of the year they hold holy. They use hallucinatory plants such as various mushrooms, hashish and other substances. They believe in a god, or a goddess, but it is the god or goddess within them they seek to discover, not an alien entity. They eschew all violence, even in self-defence. They do not tell others what to do and they do not expect others to tell them what to do. They condemn no activity or behaviour that brings pleasure and does not harm others. To avoid conflict, division into parties, power struggles and the like, they limit their numbers in any one group to twenty or so people. Out of these, seven or so of the older members form a council who take decisions for the whole group.