King and Emperor

Chapter Twenty-six

Erkenbert looked with doubt and suspicion at the aged wood held out to him. He had seen many relics: the bones of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Guthlac, of Saint Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede, even, once, a fragment of the True Cross itself when it was exposed for adoration. He had never seen one entirely unadorned. This looked like something a peasant had left behind his wood-stack for twenty years, and never got round to burning. It was old, he conceded. It looked exactly like the device the one-eyed pagan wore round his neck.

“Are you sure this is it?” he demanded.

Richier the traitor began to babble pleas of assurance.

“Not you. You, Sieghart. Is this the holy thing itself that the Emperor seeks?”

“It was well-hidden,” said Sieghart stolidly. “Deep inside the mountain, traps all the way. Ambushes too. Lost a few men. But I kept the rat here on his leash, and had plenty of torches burning. We found it in the end. Strange place. Lot of burnt bones.”

“Answer my question!”

Sieghart screwed his face up with the effort of decision. “Yes, I think it is. I think they think it is, anyway. We found a lot of other stuff with it.”

He jerked a thumb and four men came forward. At another gesture they opened their sacks, tipped the contents on to the mud floor of the hovel Erkenbert had made his base. He drew in his breath at the sight of the gold plate, the cups, the incense burners, objects that he could see were there for divine service. No, service of idols, he corrected himself. But it was no secular hoard, not even a king's hoard. An idea began to stir. As it did so his eye caught unexpected objects amid the loot. Books. Two of them.

He picked one up, opened it. “What is this?” he demanded of the despairing Richier.

“They are the holy books of our—of the heretic faith. There are only two copies of them.” Richier had meant to say “two copies left,” but some mistaken instinct of self-preservation warned him.

“And what is holy about them?”

“They tell the story—they claim to tell the story of what happened after… after Christ was taken down from the Cross.”

“But that story is in the Gospel of Nicodemus. Not a work that the Church has admitted into the canon of the Bible, but a work worthy of reverence. There are many copies of it in the libraries of Christendom.”

“This tells a different story,” whispered Richier. He did not dare even to hint at what the story might be.

His face set, Erkenbert began to skim the book's pages. The Latin it was written in caused him no difficulty, though for an instant or two his lip curled in contempt of its barbaric style. Then his face seemed to set even harder and grimmer. He had come to the claim that Christ survived. Did not die. Did not rise again. Fled, married, raised children. Abjured his faith.

Abjured his faith.

“Have you read this book?” asked Erkenbert quietly.

“No. Never.”

“You are lying. You knew it told a different story. Sieghart! What have you done with the men who were hanged in the shed?”

“Dug a grave. Waiting for a priest to say the burial service over them. Some might have been good Catholics.”

“There will be no burial service. Some were assuredly heretics. Heretics so vile they deserve no burial, if it were not for the stench they leave in the nostrils. But the stench of these books is greater. Before you fill in the grave, Sieghart, throw these in. Let them not go to clean flame, but lie and corrupt with the corruption of their authors. And Sieghart…”

The two men's eyes met, a faint nod. Sieghart freed his dagger noiselessly, mouthed the word “Now?” Another nod. Catching some hint of what was meant, Richier struggled forward to the knees of the deacon, babbling still, “I brought you the graal, I deserve a reward…”

The dagger sank from behind into the base of his skull. “You have your reward,” said Erkenbert to the face- down sprawling figure. “I released you from fear. You did not deserve shrift and salvation. Worse than Pelagius, worse than Arius. They brought false belief, but you… you would have left Christians with no belief at all. Do not open that book, Sieghart, on your soul's salvation.”

“That's all right, magister,” said Sieghart amiably. “I can't read.”

“Reading is for the wise alone,” confirmed Erkenbert.

Two days later and thirty miles to the south across the mountain passes, Erkenbert timed his entry to the Emperor's banquet with precision. For three successive nights the Emperor had remained on the field of battle, resting his men, burying the dead, dividing the loot of the Caliph's baggage train, and hearing the priests of his army sing the Te Deum laudamus from behind an altar built of captured weapons. Now, inside the great pavilion, its inner hangings torn away so that all could banquet where once the Caliph's harem had been kept, he sat at the head of the high table.

Erkenbert walked slowly in to face him, six Lanzenritter pacing gravely behind him, their armor polished to an unearthly gleam. The Emperor's minstrels ceased their playing, the servers and wine- pourers, recognizing the gravity of the scene, stood back against the silken walls. The Emperor too caught the signs of ceremonial, of vital portent. His face paled as hope seized his heart. He rose to his feet, and all speech stopped instantly.

Erkenbert said nothing, continued walking forward. Then he stopped, turned away as if self-effacingly, an icon of Christian humility with his slight frame and dull black robe. He raised a hand to Sieghart.

Swelling with pride, the Ritter drew aside the elaborate altar-cloth with which he had hidden the graduale, passed it to his second-in-command. Silently he held the wooden pole-ladder at arm's length above his head, like a battle-standard.

“Is that it, is that the…” the Emperor began.

“It is the ladder of Joseph of Arimathea, on which our Lord's body was carried to the Holy Sepulchre,” cried out Erkenbert at the full force of his lungs. “From which He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures! According to the Apostles' Creed! Let all see it and know their faith confirmed.”

The Emperor dropped instantly to one knee, followed in moments by every other man and woman in the pavilion, except for Sieghart, standing like a resplendent statue.

Finally Sieghart lowered the graduale gently to the earth, and as if by compensating machinery, the Emperor and his following rose. Bruno held out a hand. Sieghart stepped forward and placed the Grail in it. With his other hand Bruno brought Grail and Lance together.

“Death and life,” he muttered, tears running from his eyes. “Life in death. But Erkenbert… It is bare wood.”

Erkenbert waved to the four other Ritters, and as they had done before, they spilled the contents of their sacks on to the pavilion floor.

“The holy vessels of the heretics,” said Erkenbert. “Captured to the glory of God.”

“And God shall have them all,” said Bruno. “I swear that no man shall receive a pennyweight of what you have taken. I will compensate the army and the Lanzenorden from my own private purse. But every ounce of what you have taken shall be made into the greatest reliquarium of the West, to enshrine this relic for ever and ever.

“And I swear this too,” shouted Bruno, drawing his sword and holding it up like a cross in front of him. “In gratitude for the favor that God has sent me, I swear to conquer the whole of Spain for the Catholic Church, or die in the attempt. More! I will leave no-one alive within the old Empire who does not accept the sole authority of Saint Peter. Whether in Hispania or Mauretania or Dacia.”

“Or Anglia,” said Erkenbert.

“Or Anglia,” repeated Bruno. “And I further swear this. In gratitude for the faith that the deacon Erkenbert has brought me, the faith that I weakly doubted, not only will I bring his country back to the Church from its apostates, but I will make him the heir of Saint Peter, and set him on the Papal throne. And he and I will rule