Pillars of Light Read Online Free PDF

another erstwhile blind man crying out ecstatically, “I can see! I can see!” Then he ran into a pillar and fell down as if struck by a knacker’s mallet.
    The Moor caught Plaguey Mary by the arm. “He isn’t one of ours, is he?”
    She shook her head. “Some fool who’s got carried away by it all.”
    The man was beginning to writhe, blood pouring from his split skull.
    “For God’s sake, create a distraction.”
    Wailing as if possessed, Mary whirled away, unlacing her bodice. “Save me, King Arthur! There is a demon inside me, curled up between my teats. Do you see him? Oh, he is black as night and wicked as Satan. Cast him out, I beg of you!”
    Husbands stared as her opulent breasts sprang free; wives cuffed their husbands. No one paid any attention to the blind man, now groaning and clutching his head at the foot of the pillar.
    Into the midst of this chaos, a man came running through the doors and shouted something. The Moor whispered urgently in my ear. I watched the red robes flicker like a Pentecostal flame and then he was gone. I tried to follow, but the press of folk was suddenly so tight around me that I couldn’t move.
    The justiciar’s brother caught the messenger by the elbow and made him repeat his news. His great, red, slab-like face turned ashen. The messenger took a big breath, then cried out, “By God’s grace and on the orders of Henry,
Rex Angliae, Dux Normaniae et Aquitainiae et Comes Andigaviae
, bear witness to my words. Jerusalem has fallen!”
    I went cold all over. Good Christ, what timing.
    The messenger strained to make himself heard. “Jerusalem the Golden, the City of Solomon, the Navel of the World, has fallen into the hands of the great devil Saladin and his pagan horde! Its people are slaughtered or scattered to the four winds. The Sanctuary is defiled and the True Cross has been captured by the Saracens. The flower of Christianity has been destroyed. All is lost!”
    Around the Lady Chapel, faces became still. Mouths hung open, dark caves of despair. Some people crossed themselves and prayed. Then one woman wailed, “Jerusalem the Golden! Jerusalem the Golden!” as if she had lost a child. And that broke the spell.
    The heart of Christendom had ceased to beat; it was at this very moment being desecrated by the heathen. And here were these Christians, helpless and continents away.
    In such a world, who could believe in miracles?
    The golden glow of hope was lost. What had seemed illuminated and transformed by the glory of the saints now showed itself a shoddy illusion. As if a veil had been dropped from her eyes, a woman stared at the leper—a small, dark man we knew as Saw, a twin to Hammer—and frowned. I knew the hideous sign of leprosy to be no more than a paste of coloured flour and water, dried to a repulsive crust. The woman leant in and with sudden boldness peeled the sore off his face, revealing a cheek that had never been afflicted with anything worse than pimples.
    At the same time, someone else discovered the true blind man, blood running in runnels down his face; another rounded on RedWill and accused him of never having been blind at all—whoever heard of a man blind from birth knowing the difference between colours and the names of each one?
    In rising panic, I tried to blend into the background, just one appalled monk among the rest. Little Ned’s trolley was found to have a hidden compartment for his not-so-shrivelled legs, and inside it, a string of pearls he had slipped off some fat neck. One of the merchants’ wives began to scream, “My jewels, my jewels!” and suddenly Jerusalem the Golden was forgotten as people patted their necks and their belt-pouches and realized they lacked much of what they’d come in with—not pains and ills, or even sins, but purses, rings and necklaces …
    Shit. Now our heads are in the noose
.
    “Run!” I screamed at Quickfinger and Hammer, and they made a dash for the door. I swam through the crowd after them,