His nose wrinkled as he walked out of the complex and into a dusty street. Across the way stood the pool of the patriarch, which took up most of a city block. In the winter it was full, but now it was mostly stinking mud and refuse. In the centre of the muck, a pool of water glittered under the morning sun. A system of buckets and pulleys had been built to draw the water up to a raised channel, which crossed the street to provide water for the bath house. A beggar slept against the wall in the tiny patch of shelter underneath the channel. He stirred at the sound of John’s footsteps.
‘Money for a poor pilgrim far from home,’ he begged in a high, plaintive whine. He had a bulbous, red nose and sunken cheeks covered with white stubble. ‘Money to return to my wife and children. They need me.’
It was a story John had heard again and again from beggars all over the city. Sometimes it was even true. Plenty of men exhausted their funds during the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem and were unable to return. Plenty more had no wish to go back. Some were running away from a crime or an unwanted family. Others preferred the easy customs of the East. And others still fell in love with drink, gambling, women, or all three. From the look of him, John guessed that any money this old man got would go to drink. He tossed him a copper anyway.
He walked south and turned left on to David Street. It angled steeply uphill, and John mounted a series of steps as he passed the shops built into the southern wall of the Hospitaller complex. ‘Sacred oil, my good sir?’ one of the merchants called to John in French, mistaking him for a pilgrim. He held out a lead flask decorated with images of the saints on one side, and the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem on the other. ‘It will bring you luck. No? A reliquary pendant, perhaps? It contains a splinter of the true cross! Or perhaps a pilgrim’s badge to commemorate your visit to the Holy City?’ John kept walking, and the merchant turned his attention to another passer-by.
Past the shops, John reached the square where David Street intersected with Zion Street and paused. To his left, moneychangers sat before their scales, framed by imposing armed men. A few pilgrims were changing their ducats, livres, siliquae, perperi and obols for the bezants and deniers of the Kingdom. Opposite the moneychangers, labourers loitered on the southern edge of the square, hoping to be hired for some menial task. Ahead, the dome of the Templum Domini rose above the city, its gold-clad surface glinting in the morning light. The sight of it always made John smile. The priests told pilgrims that it was the Lord’s Temple from the days of Christ, but Father William had confided to John that this new temple had been built by the Saracens a half-millennium ago.
John’s musings were interrupted by a rumble from his hungry stomach. He walked north into the Street of Herbs, a narrow lane covered over with vaulted stonework and lined with shops selling spices and fresh fruits. The pilgrims who had spent the night asleep on the stone benches between the shops were just rising. Native Christian servants hurried from shop to shop, purchasing food for their masters’ households. Robed priests and knights in armour stood out amongst them. John shouldered his way through the crowd to the stall of an olive-skinned native Christian who was busy placing out baskets of figs, apples and mangos.
‘As-salaamu ‘alaykum, Tiv,’ he greeted him in Arabic.
The merchant smiled, showing yellowing teeth. ‘Wa ‘alaykum as-salaam, John. What can I do for you?’
‘These mangos look good.’
‘The best in all Jerusalem. Only two fals.’
John handed over the copper coins and plucked a mango from one of the baskets. He took a bite of the golden, pulpy fruit and grunted in satisfaction as the juice ran down his chin. He gestured to the overflowing baskets. ‘Expecting a crowd, Tiv?’
‘In four days it will be the feast of liberation, celebrating the capture of Jerusalem by the Frankish dogs.’ Tiv spat to the side as he placed another basket of fruit on the table. ‘The festivities, may God piss on them, always bring a crowd.’
‘May you profit from them.’ John moved on, eating his mango as he walked. He left the covered street and strolled through an open square filled with clucking chickens and feathers floating on the morning breeze. The powerful smell of fish filled his nose as he entered the fish market, which sat in the shade of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. John was pushing his way through the crowd when he spotted a dark-haired woman at a stall just ahead of him. From behind, with her long hair hanging to her waist and her petite, voluptuous figure, she looked just like Zimat. She was dressed in a close-fitting white caftan and niqab, a veil which covered all her face but for her eyes. John caught a glimpse of her hands as she passed money to the merchant; they were the golden colour of the sands north of Damascus, just like Zimat’s. John felt his pulse quicken. Then the woman turned and their eyes met. It was not Zimat. The woman lowered her gaze and walked away.
John cursed himself for a fool as he continued on his way. Of course it had not been Zimat. No Saracens were allowed in the city. And why would she come? She did not even know he was alive. He wondered where she was now, if she had married again, but shook the thoughts from his mind. It did not matter. He would be made a priest that very morning.
A trickle of sweat ran down John’s back as he knelt on the stone floor of the sanctuary of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and listened to the patriarch pray. The church was hot due to the dense crowd that had come to hear Sunday Mass, and the priestly garments that John wore offered no relief. His alb, a loose white tunic of linen, was belted at his waist with a cord of red silk. Over it was his chasuble, a sleeveless, suffocating garment of heavily embroidered white silk. A rectangle of linen covered his head and fell to his shoulders on either side. Over his left shoulder hung a stole of red silk with white crosses embroidered at the ends. The priest’s maniple, a band of red silk embroidered with gold, was tied to his left forearm. It seemed strange, sacrilegious even, to wear the priestly vestments. Yet in only a few moments he would be a priest. More than that, he would be a canon of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred place in all Christendom, built on the site where Jesus had been buried and risen again.
Each canon received a monthly stipend, and in return they were to live in the dormitory, eat in common and pray the canonical hours: Matins, which took place some three hours before dawn; Lauds shortly before sunrise; Prime in the early morning hours; Terce, Sext, and None over the course of the day; Vespers at sunset; and Compline just before bed. John would live at the church, but William had told him that he would have a vicar to take his place at prayers. Most of the canons did. John would thus be free to continue his work at the palace. There were only two rules that he absolutely had to obey: he must attend the services during Advent and Lent; and he must not be absent from the church for more than three months at a time without dispensation from the patriarch.
John had met the patriarch — called Amalric, like the king — in person for the first time only a few days previously. It was the patriarch’s duty to interview any candidate to become a canon. Amalric was one of the four men who had condemned John to crucifixion when he first arrived in Jerusalem, but the patriarch seemed to have no recollection of him. He had been seated at a small table in his private quarters, carving bites of meat from a roasted shoulder of pork.
‘I am John of Tatewic, Your Beatitude,’ John had declared.
The patriarch had not looked up from his dinner. ‘Hmmm?’
‘The candidate to be named to the vacant canon’s seat, Your Beatitude.’
Amalric had put down his knife and fork and squinted at John. ‘Come forward.’