A Matter of Marriage (37 page)

“Well done. I can see you've progressed a lot in the last hour.”

One lifted his hand briefly, before letting it flop back to the floorboards. “Yeah, thanks, mate. Any ideas?”

Henry waved toward Dr. Choudhury. “We've got the experts here now, so let's see what they have to say.” He turned to Kareem. “This end wall, you see, is one of the original outer walls of the Abbey: local Cotswold stone and nearly four feet thick. But here, in the middle, the plaster covering the stonework was clearly deteriorating. When our National Trust boffins had a closer look, it turned out to be a different quality: a different ratio of lime, or, ah, gypsum, to sand and water, you understand. So it had probably been done later. And when our hardworking students took it back, we found this niche.”

Henry pointed at the dressed stone quoins and central keystone that edged the niche. “So we thought, it's some kind of filled-in window because of this framing stonework; it's as old as the Abbey. But then, as you can see, once we cleared out the brickwork behind the plaster, and the rubble behind that, we not only find no sign of a filled-in window, but we find this.”

Kareem stayed back from the ropes and brushed fastidiously at his suit jacket. “How about a builder's mistake then? Got the plans the wrong way round, thought they were doin' a door?”

Henry shook his head. “Unlikely. It's just too finely crafted. And look how the wall inside the niche is one smooth curve. And the top of the framing stonework sort of swells out then comes to a point. No, it's definitely both original and intentional. But what for?”

“Didn't they wall up nuns that had boyfriends 'n' that?” Kareem's voice tailed off a little, and Henry noticed him looking uneasily at the Choudhurys, as if regretting what he'd said.

“Well, technically, nuns were punished for adultery, because they were married to the Church. And, of course, for breaking their holy vows.”

Thea, also in earshot, dropped something on the ground, but wouldn't meet his eye. He called out to her. “Hey, Thee, I'm back at last. You remember Kareem?”

Thea nodded in acknowledgement.

He continued his history lesson. “But no, ah, there never were any nuns here. It was a monastery only.”

Kareem walked on to the far end of the gallery, and Thea started to leave, muttering something about needing to wash. Henry lifted a hand to hold her back, but then thought better of it. She did look upset, and now she was folding her arms: always a bad sign. Perhaps she'd been feeling left out of the conversation.

“Thee,” he said tentatively. “What do you think of it all then?”

“No idea, I'm sure,” she said, but when she was almost past him, she reached out a hand and splayed it against his chest. He froze in surprise. She kissed him on the mouth, dust and all, then quickly withdrew and walked away, toward the door, as if nothing had happened.

Henry blinked. Thee wasn't normally one for spontaneous gestures. But she had been different the last couple of days. More relaxed, until just now. Not even dressing for dinner. Perhaps the warm weather.

“I'm going to have a word with the movers” she called over her shoulder. “They're bringing back the books for the library today.”

“Rightio, Thee. See you later.”

Dr. Choudhury called him over, and he ducked under the ropes and walked gingerly across the drop cloths, anxious not to step on tile fragments like the ones Thea seemed to have been collecting. She seemed so fragile sometimes.

As he approached the niche, Dr. Choudhury beckoned him closer. “I do think that these tiles were made with this or an identical niche in mind.” He pointed at the margin where tiles met the dressed stonework of the architraves seamlessly. “Beautiful craftsmanship. See here? These tiles were not cut to fit: they were made with a curve to measure.”

Tariq spoke up. “Or the niche was.”

“No matter, no matter,” said Dr. Choudhury, flipping his wrist dismissively. “What matters is that they were made for each other.”

“You know,” Henry said thoughtfully, sliding one finger down the cool gloss of a tile, “this is like heaven: the night sky and stars. Could we have had a Mary cult here? Like Robert Graves wrote about: Mary, Queen of Heaven, and all that.”

Dr. Choudhury stared at the tiles. “Up here, in the gallery?”

“Yes,” Henry continued, surprised at not having been shot down immediately, “worshipped in secret, by a chosen few—the abbot and his acolytes,
Da Vinci Code
and all that . . .”

Dr. Choudhury
pah
'd
with disgust.

Tariq laughed at his father's face. “Good one, Henry. But it doesn't explain the tiles. And why have a statue of Mary in a niche at all? Until the Reformation, she was perfectly welcome downstairs in the nave, next to the altar.”

Henry felt his face grow hot. “I know it's not my area, but I still think that this niche was used for something special. Look at where it is.” He waved an arm at the long gallery. “Largest room in the building: larger, even, than the nave and apse combined. Big window set high at the far end, the western end, throwing light onto this end. Door set way down there, as if they didn't want to interfere with some kind of gathering closer to the niche.” The other two were silent, and he dropped his hand, feeling foolish. “I just think . . .”

“It comes back to the tiles,” said Dr. Choudhury. “Perhaps if we could date them.”

Henry sighed. “We should probably let the National Trust know about this. Their archaeological division will most likely take it over.”

“Oh no. Oh, man,” said one of the sandstormed students. “After all our work?”

Henry and Tariq looked at Dr. Choudhury. He hesitated, then smiled. “I do not consider that the niche is going anywhere. The excavation has been most carefully done.” He nodded at the students, who cheered and lay back on the floorboards. “And besides, I am effectively the Trust's representative, in any event.”

“How about, ah, Theo Kiriakis?” Henry said reluctantly.

Dr. Choudhury seemed almost carefree. “All in good time. When Mr. Kiriakis is told, he will want more information than we are currently able to give him, so, in all, I do consider that completion of these excavations would be prudent. And perhaps a little work on the, er, dating side of things.”

The students sat up and began to put their face masks back on. Kareem strolled toward them from the far end of the gallery and ducked under the ropes. He picked up a cloth and, before Henry or anyone could warn him about the tiles' fragility, ran it along the dado in one horizontal sweep. The swirls and curlicues of gold on green stood out vividly, but without the regularity of a pattern.

“Holy shit,” Kareem said. “Sorry, Uncle, sorry, Baiyya. What's that doing here?”

“
Arabic
,” said Dr. Choudhury. “Arabic writing, in a twelfth-century English monastery.”

Henry bent down to look for himself. “Good Lord. Perhaps the Reverend Bourne brought these back from his travels.”

“No,” said Dr. Choudhury. “This is much older. I am certain of it now. And think of the stonework around it.”

Kareem stepped backward to view the niche as a whole, then gave a shout of laughter, making Henry jump. “It's a mihrab, man! What's a mihrab doing in a monastery?”

Henry looked at Kareem. “What's a mihrab?”

“It's for the
qibla
wall—the direction for Mecca. Where you face to pray, in a mosque.”

“Good Lord,” said Henry again. “So, ah, you're saying that they must have brought this back from the Crusades. Heavens. I mean, brought the tiles back, and the idea, and maybe the artisans too.”

A long
aah
sound came from Dr. Choudhury, who nodded at Henry's disbelieving face. “Good heavens. Yes. Of course. Well done, Kareem. In the great mosques they were often very elaborately decorated, often with glazed and marble tiles, glass mosaic . . . But here . . . Surely . . .”

“It does face east, doesn't it?” said Tariq.

Henry nodded.

“Jesus Christ. Abba, was the first abbot a Crusades knight?”

Dr. Choudhury coughed delicately. “That is correct, Tariq. He went on the Crusades, and he was knighted. But there are indications from the records extant, which Henry has been working on, that he was not knighted for valor on the battlefield. His specialty seemed to be more along the lines of, ah, gathering information.”

“You mean, he was a spy?” said Kareem. “Deep cover, eh?”

Henry answered. After all, it was his family, in a way. “Not really. Some of the surviving documents, including a frieze in Tregoze Church, describe his services as, ah, in the line of obtaining information by force.”

“Like torture, you mean,” said Tariq.

There was an uncomfortable pause, and Henry realized that Dr. Choudhury was again waiting on him. “Ah, yes. Yes.”

Kareem slapped his hands against his thighs so hard that the sound echoed through the gallery like a gunshot. “Extraordinary rendition! That's what all dis came from. Torturing Muslims!” He laughed and turned to Tariq. “We better watch out here, man! Nuttin' new in the world is dere!”

Tariq snorted with laughter, but Henry was mortified. How on earth could they find it funny?

“Why is the niche here then?” he asked Dr. Choudhury. “If it was the first abbot who built this—”

“Had it built, Henry. Had it built.”

“Had it built. Why would he make his fortune from torturing the enemy and then have this built? Go to all this effort? I can understand bringing home rugs and scimitars and, er, ah, concubines—spoils of war and all that. But this, this is different.”

By the time he had finished speaking, Kareem and Tariq appeared to have calmed down, but he still felt an obscure sense of hurt at their levity, as if they'd been making fun of him by laughing at his Abbey's history. And surely torture and war were nothing to joke about. And in front of the students too, who had drifted up, still masked, and were listening to the exchange.

Dr. Choudhury addressed them all. “When two cultures clash like this, invade each other's lands, settle and are reconquered again and again over the centuries, cultural cross-fertilization is inevitable. Look at Cordoba in Spain, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.”

“Yeah,” said Tariq. “But this, this isn't just a bit of Romanesque architecture. It's religion.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Choudhury thoughtfully. “I am wondering if our first abbot came back a convert.”

No one said a word.

Then Kareem chuckled. “A convert. To Islam.” He seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. “And so he sets up the monastery, and then what?”

“Well . . .” Dr. Choudhury appeared to ponder. “He worships here in secret. Comes up here to pray, perhaps with some other secret converts within the Abbey, maybe some other ex-Crusader knights.”

Tariq nodded. “Yeah. Soldiers do stick together, especially if they've seen action together.”

Dr. Choudhury stared at his son a little strangely, and Henry found himself wondering about Tariq's background.

“But, as I was saying,” Dr. Choudhury continued, “there is every indication that the first abbot ordered the religious life—the religious Christian life, of the Abbey—in the usual way. It's quite possible to have, ah, a secret or double life, you know.” He paused for a moment. “Otherwise he could never have survived, let alone flourished and acquired more land, the way that we know he did. This Abbey was one of the great pre-Reformation monasteries, known for its learning as well as its wealth, until Henry VIII decided to close it down and redistribute its lands.”

Dr. Choudhury moved closer to the niche. The students, and everyone else, watched him.

“That, I think, is when this Abbey caught fire. You can see here, and here, some of these tiles showing signs of having been scorched and blackened, some cracked by the great heat of the fire. So, that tells us that this niche may have been open, perhaps even still in use, some three hundred years after it was built.”

Tariq looked shocked. “You mean, in use as a mihrab, for all that time?”

“Well, that we do not know. In those days, tradition was everything. So
salat
, that's Muslim prayer, may well have been carried on in front of the mihrab by successive generations of abbots, or knights, though perhaps without a full understanding of what it meant. Many traditions are like that. Look at morris dancing. And maypoles.”

Henry's mouth opened, and he gave a little start of excitement. “Come to think of it, the Reverend Bourne had all his Orientalist prayer and pilgrimage paintings up here. You haven't seen those, Kareem—they're still in storage. But they're all North African images: dawn prayer on a rooftop, pilgrims on camels, praying at the tomb of Ali . . . Good Lord. I'd never thought.”

Dr. Choudhury stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Indeed, Henry. And I seem to recall, from early photographs, that the pictures were hung so that images in the paintings, the, er, dawn worshippers for example, faced east. Maybe he was a convert as well. The Algerian boys that he used to bring back from his travels would certainly have been Muslim.”

Tariq stared at him. “Eh?”

Dr. Choudhury looked at a point just above his son's head. “The Victorian grand tour was not only, er, educational but, shall we say, for some of the gentlemen, a broadening experience, amongst what were, in some ways, the less repressed cultures of the Near and Middle East. Similar to the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the Reverend let them pray up here, put the paintings up to keep them company, thought it was appropriate. They would have needed to face east, toward Mecca, so it is possible that they unknowingly continued the Abbey's tradition.”

Henry thought Tariq seemed pleased, even moved, but as for himself, now that he'd gotten it, he was bouncing on the balls of his feet with enthusiasm. “Never mind about that. Just think: those Templar knights coming back from Cordoba or Morocco or Tunis, with the tiles and the plans for the niche and goodness knows what else. Such a secretive order, you know. The rosy cross and all that.”