Pillars of Light by Jane Johnson

Prince Richard,” one said, and a group formed around him.
    “What’s he like?”
    “A fine-looking man—tall, red-haired and pale-eyed, and very fair of face, with a true kingly air to him.”
    None of this was surprising. No one was likely to say the new king looked like a hobgoblin, even if he did. The speaker related that Richard was a great warrior, won all the tourneys, could compose poetry and sing to a lute. I yawned: such a paragon.
    Behind me, another man said quietly, “They say the king’s corpse bled from the nose when Richard paid his respects.”
    His neighbour asked, “You mean he caused his father’s death?”
    I pressed my way through the crowd towards the door, intenton pissing away some of the ale in order to make room for more. Out in the alley, I almost fell over a man slumped over, weeping copiously.
    I touched the poor chap on the shoulder. “You all right?”
    A great moon face turned up to me. It was Savaric.
    “He was my friend.”
    His shoulders heaved violently, then he reached up and clutched my arm, opened his mouth to speak and out came a great billow of fermented honey, which told me all I needed to know.
    “Come on,” I said, trying to haul him up. “Let’s walk down to the sea, get some fresh air. You’ll catch some awful contagion sitting here.”
    The Moor glided around the corner at that moment, a shadow among shadows. I was grateful to see him.
    “Help me get him up on his feet.”
    Savaric wasn’t a small man, and dead drunk he was a dead weight. We heaved him upright, the churchman swaying unsteadily, fumes of mead wafting off him.
    On a rise of shingle overlooking the sea we sat down in a row and stared silently out at the black waves and the trembling silver line of the moon’s path upon it.
    “I loved Henry,” Savaric choked out at last. “He was a great man. Headstrong and rash sometimes, but his anger came like a thunderstorm—noisy and furious but passing quickly. We would have been friends again, had I just had the time to pay him back what I owed him.” His great lugubrious eyes gazed out over the dark waters. “He was a lion, with his tawny hair and that big, bold, open face. None of us could keep up with him, he had such energy. I took his money … and now I’ll never have the chance …” His hands fell and flexed. “I am damned, damned forever. If I cannot make restitution for my sins with he whom I wronged, then I must find another way of buying my way into Heaven.”
    The Moor waited for the spasm to pass, then put an arm around Savaric’s shoulder. “They say his son is much like him, this Richard.”
    Savaric turned to him. “They do say that, don’t they?” A pause. “I will do my utmost to raise funds for his holy war. And in doing so, perhaps I can save my soul.”
    He hauled himself to his feet, and at once the Moor stood to steady him. Savaric waved him away. “Leave me be. Where is my cousin? I must talk to him right away!” And he lurched off into the gloom.
    “I will see you to the path, at least,” the Moor said. “We do not want you falling into the marsh.”
    I sat there freezing on the chilly shingle, wishing I still had the fur the monks had shaved off. Such a bright moon: it was like an eye, the eye of God, beaming down on me. What did it see? An unworthy soul, a half-wild thing pretending to be a civilized man? A man who loved another? Unnatural, absurd.
    Shingle crunching underfoot.
    I turned so fast I cricked my neck. The Moor was looking down at me, his gaze more penetrating even than the silver eye above. Then he folded his long legs and we sat there in the darkness. I could feel a tension between us that had never been there before and I was suddenly tongue-tied. All the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and my mouth burned as it remembered another time we were alone together in the night, when he had pushed me out of Saint Edith’s chapel all those months ago. I wished I could take him by the arm now,