In the morning they woke to find themselves alone, the Seljuk camp deserted and the road empty in both directions. They ate breakfast in a continuation of last night’s despondent silence, then Vallon went through the laborious business of getting into the saddle.
Hero mounted his own horse. ‘Which way?’
Vallon turned his horse north.
‘What about Caitlin? She’ll be waiting for you.’
Vallon kept going. ‘Waiting for what? Look at me. A helpless cripple. Even my plans to join the Varangians lie in tatters. No one would employ a soldier in my condition.’
Hero caught up. ‘She knows what condition you’re in. She still wants to be with you. I heard her declaration of devotion.’
‘A declaration made in the heat of passion. By now she’ll have had time to reflect and her head will rule that she can make a far better match.’
Hero pranced ahead so that he could look into Vallon’s eyes. ‘You don’t know that for sure. At least give her the chance to make her wishes known.’
Vallon’s dull stare remained fixed straight ahead. ‘We made an agreement. If we found the gospel, I would return. We haven’t got it and so I go on.’
‘She might not want to remain in Suleyman’s court.’
‘She has enough silver to reach Constantinople in comfort.’ Vallon waved his good hand. ‘Forget Caitlin.’
Hero dropped back alongside Vallon. Another fine day, a cloudless porcelain sky over the blinding white salt flats. Flamingos flocked across Salt Lake in lines of bright crimson script. Vallon plodded on, aware that Hero kept glancing at him. ‘I told you I don’t want to hear another word.’
‘It’s not Caitlin I’m thinking about.’
‘What then?’
‘I’ve been thinking about the gospel.’
Vallon uttered a hollow laugh. ‘So have I.’
‘Not like that.’ Hero hesitated. ‘I’m not sure you’ll want to hear my thoughts.’
‘You can’t make its loss any more painful.’
Hero drew breath, held it, then released it all at once. ‘I don’t think we would have been able to sell it. That is, nobody in the Church would buy it.’
Vallon stared at him. ‘You told me that it’s one of the most important books ever written.’
‘Important for the wrong reason. If someone did buy it, they would do so only to suppress it. Destroy it.’
‘Suppress the testament of one of the apostles? Destroy a piece of the Bible?’
‘The Bible is the word of God, but the Church decides what words it wants the world to hear. After reflecting on the sections of the Thomas gospel I was able to read, I’ve concluded that the ecclesiastical authorities wouldn’t want to share them with their flock.’
‘Explain.’
‘First, all four canonical gospels state that Jesus was the son of a humble carpenter and Luke says he practised the trade himself. None of them discuss his boyhood or upbringing. They must have had some knowledge of his early life, yet they chose to draw a veil over it. Not Thomas, though. He says that Jesus was the son of a tekton, a master mason or architect who was also a teacher of the Torah, and that Jesus was educated in Jewish law, becoming an eminent rabbi.’
Vallon winced as his left foot jarred against his horse’s flank. ‘Are you saying that Thomas was a liar and his gospel a fake?’
‘No. In fact, I think his version is more convincing than the others. Remember Luke’s story of how, when Jesus was twelve, his parents lost him in Jerusalem? After five days they discovered him in the Temple, astonishing the scholars with his knowledge of religious matters. The elders would have recruited such a prodigy into their schools, singling him out as a future leader. Elsewhere in the gospels, he’s frequently described as “Rabbi” or “Doctor of Law”. Respected Jewish scholars come to hear him preach. They wouldn’t do that with a carpenter.’
‘I don’t see why the Church would reject the gospel because Thomas claims that Jesus was a great scholar and teacher. The opposite, I would have thought.’
‘That’s not the only way in which it differs from the Biblical accounts. Thomas calls Jesus “the Son of Man” rather than the “Son of God”. That’s an important distinction, one that challenges the belief that Jesus was truly divine. Another thing. Thomas refers to Jesus as chrestos, spelled with an e, rather than christos, with an i. The two words are pronounced the same but mean different things. Christos with an i means the “anointed one” — the Messiah sent by God to proclaim the Second Coming. Chrestos with an e simply means “good”.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘One of my uncles is a priest. For a time I was destined for the Church.’
‘Well, I’m no book scholar, but it seems to me that you’re splitting hairs.’
‘That’s what theologians do. They’ve been doing it for a thousand years and the result is the faith as practised today, down to the last liturgical detail. Anything that doesn’t fit the official version has no place in the canon. The schism between Rome and Constantinople is a good example. Do you know what caused it?’
Vallon thought. ‘I have no idea.’
‘The main doctrinal issue concerns a single word, filioque, which the Roman Church added to the Nicene Creed. It means “and the son” and appears in the affirmation “And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.” What it does is emphasise that Jesus, the Son, is of equal divinity with God, the Father. The Eastern Church won’t accept the addition, concentrating on the supremacy of God the Father. For five hundred years they’ve been arguing about that word.’
‘So the Church only hears what it wants to hear.’
‘Precisely. It would take an enormous weight of evidence for the authorities to alter the accepted gospel story by so much as a jot. One book discovered by adventurers in Anatolia wouldn’t be enough.’
‘Not for Rome perhaps. The Greek Church might be more receptive.’
Hero shook his head. ‘Whatever their other differences, both Churches would treat any book that emphasised Christ’s human nature as a loathsome heresy.’
‘So if we still had the gospel and tried to sell it, we might be burned as heretics.’
‘I don’t think they’d go that far. They’d probably burn the gospel, though.’
Vallon plodded on in silence for a while. ‘Hero, if that was meant to console me, it hasn’t worked.’
‘I thought you’d want to know.’
‘You only read a few passages. Cosmas had the opportunity to study the entire book. He was a learned man. He must have noticed the same problems as you, yet it didn’t quench his desire to get his hands on it.’
‘He sought the truth above all things. Perhaps he found in Thomas some revelation that would shake Christendom to its foundations.’
‘Such as the secrets that Thomas said would strike fire from the rocks.’
‘Possibly. Or it might have been something else, some revelation concerning Jesus’s death and resurrection.’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m not sure I dare speak it aloud. It’s blasphemous.’
‘Don’t worry about the fate of my soul. Come on, spit it out.’
‘Very well.’ Hero composed his thoughts. ‘Several sources say that Thomas evangelised in India and made many converts on the coast. Cosmas met some of the communities and he visited Thomas’s shrine near a city called Madras. These Christians call themselves “the Christians of St Thomas”, but Cosmas told me that they belong to the Nestorian sect.’
‘I know little about them except that the Latin Church denounces them as heretics.’
‘Of the most damnable kind. Nestorius lived four centuries later than Thomas, and like him had doubts about Jesus’s divinity. Even though he was the Patriarch of Constantinople, he preached that Christ had two distinct natures, one divine, one human, and that mankind would find redemption not in Christ’s divinity, but in Jesus’s human life of temptation and suffering. The Orthodox Church found Nestorius’s humanisation of Jesus scandalous and at a council called by the pope they stripped him of his office. His teachings spread, though, east into Persia and on into India. I think the Christian communities there embraced them so readily because they were very similar to the doctrine taught in the Gospel of Thomas.’
Vallon turned it over in his mind. ‘But that wouldn’t shake Christendom. Where’s the revelation?’
‘I really don’t think I should speculate any further.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘What could it have been that made Thomas doubt Jesus’s divinity?’
‘Don’t ask me. I know my creed and paternoster and that’s the limit of my learning.’
‘There’s a clue in the Bible, in the Gospel of St John, where he describes how the resurrected Christ showed himself to all the disciples except Thomas. Remember?’
‘Of course! Doubting Thomas. He refused to believe that Christ had risen from the dead until he saw Him in the flesh and felt his wounds with his hands.’ Vallon gave Hero a sharp look. ‘He doubted, and then Jesus banished his doubts. We’re no further forward.’
Hero didn’t answer.
Vallon glanced at the sky as though he suspected a heavenly eavesdropper. He leaned slightly towards Hero and dropped his voice. ‘Are you saying that Thomas didn’t see the risen Christ?’
‘I’m saying that if he witnessed the resurrection, he could have had no reason to doubt Jesus’s divinity.’
Vallon dropped his voice further still. ‘You mean Thomas says that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? That he was mortal like any man?’
‘It’s speculation, nothing more.’
Vallon leaned back and crossed himself. ‘Dark waters. Well, we’ll never have a chance to go deeper. By now the gospel will be ashes.’
‘I’m not so sure. I think the Seljuks will hide it away in a library. A thousand years have passed since it was written. Who knows? A thousand years from now, it might surface again.’
The end of the lake came in sight. Vallon heard Hero sigh, saw him shake his head.
‘What’s troubling you now?’
Hero grimaced. ‘I loved Richard, feared and hated Drogo and for Walter felt nothing but contempt. But I can’t help being distressed at the thought of their parents waiting in Northumberland for the return of their sons, not knowing that none of them will come home again. As much as I hate the prospect, I feel it’s my duty to write and bring their futile waiting to a close.’
Vallon had nothing to add on the matter. ‘I was recalling Aaron’s pre — diction that our enterprise was doomed to failure. He was right.’ Vallon frowned. ‘Nearly right. We’re no worse off than when we started out.’
Hero snapped out of his musings. ‘We’re better off by far. We have enough silver to take us to Constantinople, and we still have Prester John’s letter.’
Vallon’s own spirits lifted. ‘Do you really believe that he dines at a gold and amethyst table and sleeps in a sapphire bed and rides into battle perched on a golden castle borne by an elephant?’
Hero laughed. ‘I suspect that his royal sublimity has stretched the truth a little.’
‘The priest-king’s a weaver of fantasies, peddling dreams to feed our craving for the unknown. He probably dwells in a mud fort and eats porridge off bare boards.’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’
Vallon eyed him asquint. ‘I would have thought that you’d done enough travelling. Haven’t you followed enough wilderness rivers and crossed enough deserts?’
‘If only a tenth of Prester John’s claims are true, it would be a journey worth making.’
‘You look as if you’re already planning it.’
Hero shook his head. ‘One day, perhaps.’
‘Don’t ask me to join you. This expedition has cured any lingering wanderlust I might have had.’
Hero smiled. ‘The day we met, you said that a journey is just a tiresome passage between one place and another.’
‘I wasn’t wrong, was I? You can’t deny that the last year has been the most uncomfortable, the most painful, the most unprofitable of your life.’
‘Also the most instructive and exciting. Admit it, sir. There’s satisfaction in having completed a journey no other man has made.’
Vallon nodded reluctantly. ‘There is that. We both have a stock of tales to last us until we turn old and grey.’
They rode on, Vallon scanning the empty ridgelines with a soldier’s caution. ‘Not all rivers end in the sea.’
Hero had been miles away. He blinked. Vallon was pointing at the lake.
‘We talked one night in England of how men’s lives follow a course like a river, finally ending weak and tired in the sea.’
‘I remember.’
‘This lake has no outlet. The rivers that enter it will never reach the sea.’
Hero saw Richard’s shrouded corpse drifting out of the Dnieper estuary. ‘Richard’s journey ended in the sea. He was only seventeen. His journey had hardly begun.’
‘Every journey, no matter how short or long, has a beginning and an end. Some travellers stride out on a journey and die happy, having failed to reach their destination. Others spend years striving to attain some blissful goal only to realise when they’ve reached it that it wasn’t the place they were looking for.’
Hero’s eyes flooded. ‘I wish they were all here. I wish the journey wasn’t over.’
Vallon took his arm gently. ‘Come on. You and I still have a long way to go.’
They reached the northern shore of Salt Lake and turned west over a fly-specked plateau, following their shadows across the empty highland. Looking back, Vallon saw the summits of the twin peaks shining with the soft lustre of a fire opal, the same colours as his gem. Far back down their trail a column of dust had appeared. He reined in, his mouth dry with hope and dread.
Miles before it reached them, the dust cloud turned north, gradually dispersing. Unknown travellers following their own path.
Vallon turned back to the west.
Hero remained where he was. ‘You hoped it was her.’
‘It wasn’t. Let’s go.’
‘You still have time to return. Tomorrow will be too late for anything but regrets.’
Vallon’s face twitched. ‘What do you know about affairs of the heart?’
Hero’s features set. ‘I know about love.’
Vallon lifted a hand in apology. ‘Forgive me. Of course you do.’
‘Sir, you mustn’t wait on her to follow you. It’s not gallant. If you love her, go back.’
‘The day we met you said I was suffering from lovesickness.’
‘I wasn’t wrong then. I’m not wrong now. If you don’t find her, you’ll never be happy.’
Vallon sat his horse, tortured with indecision. ‘I can’t leave you to travel to Constantinople on your own.’
‘I’m not the one who needs care. You can’t even mount or dismount without my help.’
Vallon looked up. ‘You don’t mind retracing our steps all that weary way?’
Hero rolled his eyes. ‘I’ve been trying to persuade you to do nothing else.’
Vallon eyed the sun, excitement rising. ‘If we press hard, we should be back at the tower before dark. With luck, we’ll reach Konya in three days.’
They were back in sight of Salt Lake’s north shore when Vallon spotted a smudge of dust approaching from the south. He watched it draw closer. ‘Two riders moving fast.’
Hero screwed up his eyes. ‘Is it Caitlin?’
‘Too far to tell.’
Vallon watched the riders approach, his heart beating with painful thuds. The riders took on shape, then form resolved into features. He covered his eyes, overcome by faintness. ‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘Caitlin and Wayland.’
Hero whooped. ‘Aren’t you glad you turned back? Now you can meet her with your honour intact.’
‘She’ll probably take one look at me and ride on with her nose in the air, just as she did the day I first saw her.’ Vallon glared at Hero. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Two days ago you fought a contest with a broken arm and a torn tendon. Yet watching your beloved approach, you quake like a timorous youth.’
‘Fighting’s easy. Giving your heart to another isn’t — not for someone with my bloody history.’
Hero sobered. They waited. Wayland and Caitlin galloped up in a breathless hurry, faces pale with dust. Caitlin wore plain garments and no jewellery. No one spoke at first.
Hero broke the silence. ‘We’re sorry you had to travel so far to catch up.’
Caitlin guided her horse alongside Vallon and stared hard into his face. ‘Wayland told me that whatever you were looking for was hidden in the tower we passed half a day since. You were riding away, weren’t you? You weren’t going to come back for me.’
Vallon contemplated the ground. ‘I was sure you’d reject me.’ He looked up. ‘But in the end I had to hear it from your own lips.’
Caitlin’s features rippled in exasperation. ‘I gave you my decision. How many times more do I have to tell you?’ She looked around. ‘I take it you didn’t find what you were looking for.’
Vallon shrugged. ‘Found it, lost it.’
‘What was it?’
‘A book. Even if we’d kept it, it turns out to be less valuable than we’d hoped. All our wealth is contained in the silver Wayland won with his hawk.’
‘That’s more silver than most folk see in a lifetime.’
‘What happened to the jewels Suleyman lavished on you?’
‘The eunuch who rules his harem took them back.’ Caitlin gave an enigmatic smile and laid a hand on Vallon’s wrist. ‘All except the gold and jade girdle,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t letting that go.’
Wayland extended a hand containing a purse. ‘Syth and I agreed that this belongs to you. You were too generous.’
Vallon waved it away. ‘Keep it. You have a family to consider.’
Caitlin ran a finger down his sunken cheek. ‘It’s time you considered yourself.’ She rounded on Hero. ‘Whatever were you thinking of letting him chase after books hidden in castles? He can’t continue to Constantinople in that state. We’ll stop at the next town and find lodgings until he’s fit enough to travel.’
Hero made a gesture halfway between a cringe and a bow.
Vallon tried to protest. ‘I’ve outstayed my welcome in Suleyman’s territory. The sooner we reach Byzantium, the safer we will be.’
Caitlin swept his opposition aside. ‘You’re not in any danger from the Seljuks. We passed Faruq early this morning and he told me to take care of you.’
‘Faruq?’
She smiled. ‘You underestimate the respect the Seljuks hold you in. Their soldiers are already composing tales about you as if you were a hero of old.’
Wayland looked on, feeling curiously cut off from his friends as they prepared to vanish from his life. Vallon rode up. ‘Thank you for bringing Caitlin.’
‘She brought herself, and if I hadn’t gone, Syth would have escorted her herself.’
Vallon looked south. ‘Dear Syth. Just the thought of her brings a smile, and that smile will be with me for as long as I live.’ He slapped Wayland’s knee. ‘She’ll be missing you. Return as quick as you can.’
Wayland conned the landscape, postponing the final separation. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll ride with you a little way further.’
They rode to the west and at evening time breasted a ridge to see the plateau folding away in soft greys and mauves, the sun pulsating halfway below the horizon, the peach- and lavender-coloured sky brushed with a few streaks of fiery cloud. Vallon halted and looked hard at Wayland. ‘Now it really is the last farewell.’
They said their goodbyes with no great outpouring of emotion except from Caitlin, who planted a kiss on Wayland’s lips and enjoined him to treasure Syth all his days.
Hero dabbed a speck of dust from his eye and spoke in a voice pitched higher than normal. ‘Well, the weather’s set fair.’
Vallon raised his hand to check and stared at the empty finger with dull incomprehension. ‘The ring’s gone.’ He glanced back. ‘It must have slipped off.’
Everyone turned and stared back down the tracts of barren space.
‘Do you have any idea where you lost it?’ Hero said.
Vallon shook his head. ‘I last saw it when we set off this morning. It could be anywhere.’ He shook himself and drew a deep breath. ‘It’s gone. No point looking for it.’
‘Are you sure? The ring’s valuable. It has magical properties.’
‘And that’s why I lost it. I bet the damn thing’s gone back to Cosmas.’
A last nod at Wayland, a last penetrating look and a touch of the hand and then Vallon led his party away. Hero and Caitlin kept turning to wave, but Vallon didn’t look back, nor did Wayland expect him to.
He watched them for miles, their shadows lengthening behind them, merging into one and dissolving in the creeping dusk.
A movement in the air made him look up. Caught on the cusp of remaining light, a falcon on passage skated in smooth ellipses, intent on the ground far beneath. Its wings flickered and it slid forward, bunching up into a missile that fell in a steepening curve until it was plunging earthwards as true as a plumbline. The tide of shadows engulfed it, and though Wayland waited, it didn’t appear again. When he looked west again, Vallon, Hero and Caitlin were gone.
He waited a little while longer. A single cloud with its edges burnished by the last rays of the invisible sun glowed like a scrap of charring parchment. When the flame died he turned his horse back. The twin peaks lay sunk beneath the earth and the ridges rolled away soft as lampblack.
On his solitary journey homewards he passed within yards of Cosmas’s ring, lying buried in the winter grasses at the edge of the track. The gemstone recorded his fleeting passage, his image elongating as he approached and then contracting to a dot. Gone in a trice, leaving a dark blank eye highlit by the gleam of stars.
Wayland rode on, wishing he was at home with Syth, regretting that the quest was over. He looked back only once, to record the moment, to draw the line, to seal the memories. He raised one arm in salute before turning away.
Here or in the hereafter.