The Days of Miracles and Wonders
An Epic of the New World Disorder.
Somerville House, Toronto, Canada; Canongate, Edinburgh, U.K. 1997
Canongate paperback 1998. Interlink Books USA, 1999 (paperback).
Prologue:
God’s Little Acre.
When Richard the Lionheart died, struck by a crossbow bolt during
a minor siege of the castle of Chalus-Chabrol in the Limousin, his
heart was cut out and taken to the Cathedral at Rouen, his entrails
were removed, preserved in vinegar, in a jar, to the Abbey of Charoux,
near Poitiers, and the rest of his body was taken to the Abbey of Fontevraud,
near Chinon, for interment. But, after a while, his restless nature
asserted itself, and he rose, from the vault in which his remains had
been placed, to walk about the cloisters, the chapel and kitchen of
the Abbey, dressed in a friar's grey robe, his brow furrowed in thought,
his hands clasped behind him, as he struggled, in his mutilated state,
to make sense of his life, his battles, his desires, and the general
apathy of the Creation.
Eventually, he grew tired of the peaceful tranquility of the cloisters and
made his way up the hill, past the mid-day trippers and the Lazarus Chapel,
out the southwest gate of the complex into the Rue Saint-Lazare, following
its curve into the market place thronged, on a brilliant spring day, with tourists
clutching their souvenir booklets, road maps and Michelin Guides. It was a
Thursday, and the local townspeople were out in force, besieging the stalls
and vendors of the cheesemongers, greengrocers, fruiterers, butchers, bakers,
fishmongers, potters and postcard salespersons, the houswives and husbands
cramming plastic shopping bags with long sticks of bread, fromages, cold meats
and frozen chickens, tinned bouillabaisse and fresh carp, carrots, cauliflowers,
cabbages and corn.
The pungent smell of goat cheese propelled him past the crowded stalls, by
the moss grown walls of the old enclosure, into the Fontevraud shopping mall,
the department stores, post office, souvenir shops and cafes almost blocked
by the parked tourist cars. He skipped hurriedly to avoid a braking BMW and
manouevered his way into a plastic chair by a table at the Cafe Des Amis, protected
from the sun by a bright red and white striped awning. The Cafe was crowded
with the visitors who had come from the four corners of the earth to marvel
at the ancient Abbey's Royal Tombs. The father, Henry II Plantagenet. The mother,
Eleanor of Aquitaine. The son, minus some vital organs. And also stocked, in
gold urns in the crypt: the hearts of his brother, John Lackland, of John's
third wife, Isabella of Angouleme and their son, Henry III, who reigned from
the age of nine for more than half a century. Notable, during John's reign:
the Magna Carta. The Rule of Law. But can the Little Man, and Woman, win?
The tourists' jabber wafted, waved. At the next table, to his left, a white
shirted young man with golden hair, golden beard and two enormous gold earings
purred softly at two healthy young girls in yellow and blue t-shirts balancing
cigarettes between their fingertips. To his right, a heavy thighed German couple
held two golden children in a vice like grip of large brown palms. The waiter,
a cheerful black haired young lad in a striped apron, sauntered up and asked:
"Voulez vous, m'sieu?"
Richard chose the Sandwich Jambon and Tomato Salad and settled down to watch
the cruisers dragging Main. Germans, English, Japanese, Dutch, Swedes, and
French families from the urban north, the world's petite-bourgeoisie tripping
along the Chateaux trail. Chatillon, Loches, Tours, Chinon, Saumur, Fontevraud-L'Abbaye.
Relics of fallen empires, ploughedbattlefields and remaindered wars. Bleached
bones, dried out and disappeared tendons and sinews of old warriors and youths
who never became old warriors. Sacked villages, ashes of peasant huts burned
with their inhabitants inside, the dead echoes of the cries of men, women,
children, the bleating of farm animals driven off by maces, crossbows, lances,
smoke rising to the blue sky, the crackle of flames, the tolling of church
bells, the massed chiming of chain mail, the clank of mounted knights, the
metal charge, the flash of swords in the sun, the splintering of skulls, the
severing of arms. The blood, seeping into the soil. The captives, led off in
chains for ransom and profit, mere assets in the knightly game of human supply
and demand.
And once he has entered the fray let each man of high birth think of nothing
but the breaking of heads and arms; for it is better to die than to be vanquished
and live...
"Medic! Medic!"
The army sawbones swoop, splatter. Gangrenous limbs litter the field. Wine
poured in open wounds. Invocations of God, the Father, the Mother. Priests
intone what comfort they can. Saints stand and scratch on pillars, which grow,
higher and higher, till the shouts below are not heard.
A flight of military Mirages, training, cuts through the Angevin sky. The king's
jaws work methodically through the fresh bread, butter and ham. The teeth bite,
the tongue propels morsels down the gullet, to the emptied maw. To his right,
a dark, moustached man of wiry build and a thoughtful if mischievous look,
and a petite, lightly freckled red headed woman, both appearing in their mid
thirties, approached and sat at an available table. The man's eyes met the
king's gaze briefly before he turned to hold his companion's hand, on the table
top, with a transitory air, as if unsure whether their moment of rest in the
sun would endure.
Dust to dust. The earth moves, a gentle rocking. King Richard's eyes close,
the last morsels of ham sinking, the eyelids heavy with old dreams. Memories
and hopes. Unrequited desires and passions. Failed ambitions and vanities curtailed.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter...? So much fatigue.
The old warrior, eviscerated. No heart, no guts. No more glory.
And nevertheless...
The deep blue sea, the deep blue sky. A ship moves upon calm waters. The morning
mist scatters, revealing the battlements and towers of a fortified port, and
a vessel, flying the flag of the King of France, closing in on the harbour.
The King of England's ship approaches, his master mariner hailing the French
vessel. Bales of hay, herds of sheep and goats, casks of grain, the odour of
round cheeses and the unmistake-able contours of siege machines. A Saracen
supply ship sailing under false colours. The King orders the galleys into action.
The sailors grapple and board. Hand to hand with sword and axe among the bleating
sheep, the squeaking pigs put aboard to fool the blockading Franks. The Crusaders,
fresh to their first battle, prevail. The Arab captain scuttles his ship to
prevent his supplies falling into enemy hands. First blood for the Lionheart,
at the walls of Acre, the city taken by the Sultan Saladin four years before,
1187 A.D., as a prelude to the defeat and capture of Christian Jerusalem...
The Cross, the Crescent. Monks stamped the village squares of England, France,
the Holy Roman Empire and beyond, carrying garish painted images of the Messiah
struck down by a mailed Saracen fist. A mounted Saracen knight standing over
Golgotha, his horse urinating on the Saviour's tomb. The call to arms. The
battle for the abrogation of the Judaeo-Islamic plot. At the grand Cathedral
of Tours, the King of England took the cross, below the unblinking gaze of
Apostles and Saints, and the Nazarene in person, pledged to liberate the Holy
Land. But on the way, at Messina, he was overcome one day by the unexpected
weight of his sins. Secular slaughter, venality, fornication. He scourged his
skin with sheaves of thorns. But the burden would not lift. In Sicily, still
wracked by the guilt, he summoned the eminent hermit, Joachim of Fiore, who
walked, across the sea, from Calabria, to explain to the king, at the mouth
of a cave by Mount Etna, the true revealed pattern of History: There were three
ages - the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and of the Spirit - the Third
Age, the apex of History, to which all events were leading. An Age of Love,
Freedom and Hope in which God would be revealed to every human heart. But for
this to be achieved the persecutors of the church would have to be driven from
God's city, Jerusalem. "It is God's will," the hermit said, "that
all this will come about by your actions. God has chosen you as His Hand of
Glory."
The heart, the entrails, the right arm. The tools of manifest destiny. And
thus Richard joined the Frankish besiegers of Acre, who had been bombarding
the port for eighteen months. In Sicily he had constructed a great siege machine,
`Mategriffon', which, stored in sections aboard ship, was rebuilt facing Acre.
The French king, Philip, the Templars and the Hospitallers had their own machines
in place: `Malvoisin', the Malicious Neighbour, and the towering height of
`God's Own Sling...'
The King of England was tall and powerfully built, with flaming red hair and
deep blue eyes. He had been at war since early adolescence. The Arabs watched
his coming with fear, as the Frankish knights cheered, lit fires into the night,
sang hymns and war songs. Malik al Inkitar. The Sultan, Salah el-Din, Saladin,
wept bitter tears, in his camp outside the city, as he saw the mangonels and
weaponry brought ashore, and realised the city of Acre could not withstand
this power. The Arab garrison within was doomed. But still they fought on bravely,
hurling by catapults, from within the walls, the pots of deadly `greek fire',
an early napalm, which burned on impact and could not be dowsed. Only hides
soaked in urine and vinegar could protect the wooden siege towers. But Richard's
engineers burrowed deep below the city walls, sinking shafts which they then
filled with brushwood and set alight to weaken the supports above. Section
after section the walls fell. The moats between filled with rubbish, stones
and the piled bodies of the dead, over which the invaders crossed. `God's Own
Sling' hurled fire back into the fort. The center could not hold. On 11July,
1191, A.D., the port of Acre fell to the Crusade.
The Arabs mourned, and the Crusaders celebrated, that night. But already, in
the midst of the battles, the King of England had begun negotiations, through
intermediaries, with the Sultan, Saladin, which he continued throughout his
campaign. Messengers were sent to the Sultan's brother, al-Adil, probing for
terms of settlement. The Sultan sent back gifts of fruits and snow, from Mount
Hermon, to cool the King's parched summer. Grace and chivalry, while the foot
soldiers clashed and died. Blood, blood, blood. The Franks demands were the
release of all their prisoners in Arab hands, the return of the True Cross
captured at the Horns of Hittin four years earlier, and the surrender of Jerusalem.
The terms finally agreed, on the surrender of the garrison, without the Sultan's
permission, were: The ceding of the fortress, all its weapons and equipment,
200,000 dinars, all the Frankish prisoners in Saladin's hands, and the True
Cross, in return for the lives of the 3,000 defenders. The Frankish banners
were unfurled over the mosques and minarets.
The red haired king had triumphed. But Saladin delayed fulfilling the terms
he had not authorised. Money was not paid, the True Cross held back. Richard
fretted, anxious to press his advantage. The army was poised to march south,
to Jaffa, on its advance towards the Holy City. On the afternoon of the 20th
of August, 1191, 27 Rajab 586, the 3,000 Moslem prisoners were marched out
of the port into the plain between Tel Kaisan and Tel el-Adiyyah. There the
Christian knights, swordsmen and foot soldiers fell upon them and butchered
them where they stood, with swords, axes and lances, until not one remained
alive. Men, women and children were slaughtered that day, their cries piercing
the hot summer sky.
What choice did I have? Richard cried aloud in his anger, pounding the cafe
table. The waiter, who was laying his tray of coffees and croque monsieurs
down for the couple beside him, was startled but managed to balance his burden,
while the other tourists looked round in alarm. What could I do? War is War,
not a bloody picnic, and those of faint hearts and weak livers should stay
home, tending their gardens. I had to move on, on, on! The Saracen king had
broken his word! And he had no cause to complain. Had he not, at the Horns
of Hittin, when his armies routed Guy of Lusignan, Raymond of Tripoli and Reynald
of Chatillon, capturing all three with the cream of the Frankish knighthood,
ordered the massacre of all the captured Knights of the Temple and the Hospital?
The flower of Christendom in Outremer, put to the sword, not a single one was
spared.
"I was a man of my time." Richard said, aloud. The customers of the
Cafe Des Amis nodded, soberly. So are we all. Richard smiled apologeti-cally
at the waiter, motioning him with his finger. "Un double."
The smoke of the cooking pots rose from the valleys. The sprawling camps of
the contending forces, spread over miles of plain and beach scrub. The massive
Saracen city of tents, at Shafr'amr, housed over a hundred thousand souls.
Foot soldiers, wives, children, cooks, fletchers, blacksmiths, engineers, not
to speak of the Turcoman archers and their steeds. In the Crusader Camp, an
almost equal number, swollen by the loose women of Tyre and Sidon coming down
to entertain the expeditionary troops. Painted women, with bangles and jewels
in their navels and hairs, eager to do business and accumulate valuable foreign
specie. But the rutting could only be short lived. Men must fulfill their duty
to God. Life is onerous, brutish and short, but magnificent! Who can say other-wise??
As one watched the troops, now unencumbered by prisoners, march on towards
Jaffa...
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