John the Pupil Read online

  • • •

  Again I meet with the saint, in her dimly lit room that smells of sanctity and blood.

  The saint in her illness has become more than herself. Her soul can barely be contained in her fragile body and stretches out over geography and memory. She is like Brother Andrew, she is like my mother whom I never knew, she is like her sister, the mountain girl.

  I have told her of our mission, my Master, and she has blessed it, even though it seems to have saddened her.

  You are not alone, she tells me. There is another, a second messenger who carries a similar book. He travels faster than you.

  She will not tell me any more, not even his name, nor his location, no matter how much I plead, no matter how my heart aches to hear that my Master has entrusted my mission to another, a rival, perhaps an enemy.

  He travels alone, as will you, she says.

  A night cloud departs and starlight pierces the room, almost bright enough to write by; it shines upon her cheekbones, the sweat on her brow, and she can no longer be what I would imagine her be, with her familiarity and her unknown, perhaps unknowable ways, and this is the moment of recognition when I see the game that is being played here, that there are no sisters, the saint and the servant, just one, whom I am more than a little scared by.

  She says that she wishes to show me something.

  She is looking sly and proud and shimmering beautiful, never so lovely or so strange – and what is it that she wishes to show me? What demands that I step so closely towards her, to go towards her outstretched arms, her eyes, her fingers? I suspect that it is something about me that she intends to show – a cause for shame or doubt, an exposure of something essential and wrong.

  Look, she says. And she climbs off her bed to sit close to me by the fire, which casts wild figures on to her face, and she extends her arms towards me and I extend mine towards her, a tentative kind of answer, or protection.

  Look, she says.

  As if intent on displaying a secret treasure to share, she lifts her skirts and the starlight and the firelight cast pale wormy shadows over her skin, the too-narrow bones, the darker holes that have been gouged on the sides of her wrists and ankles.

  This is the instrument that has caused my wounds, she says drawing out a long rusty nail from, it seems, the air.

  And here, she says extending her arms again and rolling her hands to display the bleeding wounds on the underside of her wrists; another, she says and a second rusty nail appears that looks as aged as the Cross.

  She closes her eyes; her body is not strong, the Passion is great. Her hands open, the nails fall to the floor.

  I write this. My words spread across the page like rust and blood.

  There are no sisters, there is one, playing two parts, and she is asking me which of them I prefer, as if the question has meaning, as if whichever I choose, so will she be.

  When she is my mountain girl, she chafes at her servitude, she longs to be abroad and free. When she is playing the part of the saintly sister, she becomes her. I am convinced of her powers; she has become the part she plays.

  She has made other prophecies. I shall reach my destination, but I shall do it alone, and there I shall reach my death.

  And darkness shall cover me; but darkness shall not be dark to you and night shall be light as the day.

  Saint Apollinaris’s Day

  The saint’s name is formed of the words pollens, which means powerful, and ares, meaning virtue: and Apollinaris was powerful in virtue. Or the name comes from pollo, which means admirable, and naris, by which discretion is understood; and it indicates a man of admirable discretion. Or the name is formed by a, which means without, polluo, which means pollute, and ares, which means virtue; and Apollinaris was a virtuous man who was unpolluted by vices.

  My name is interpreted as grace of God, or one in whom is God’s grace, or one to whom a gift is given, or to whom a particular grace is given by God. And how far have I fallen, and how much farther shall I fall.

  Light has been extinguished. My companions walk so much faster than I, and wait for me to catch up. Walking is hard, writing almost impossible, even though my body has suffered no injury. I am invincible in prophecy, consumed by sadness.

  I think of the gospel of Gottschalk that we heard in Paris. As in Aude’s vision of the world as a place without freedom, it does not matter what we do; there is nothing that we may choose; there is no consequence. We are doomed to salvation or else doomed to hell; and the only thing that persists is the satisfaction of my Master’s will. I must reach Viterbo before the second messenger. This, and all else, is God’s to dispose.

  • • •

  We have found our way to a beautiful place, and this is how it happened, my lord, this is how we came here.

  We were in a Ghibelline town. Everywhere, banners for the Emperor, scurrility to the Pope, his image drawn on the city walls. We walked uneasily, expecting at any time to be unmasked as men of the Pope.

  And maybe we were not ready enough with our pretence of loyalty to the Germans. Maybe our sincerity glowed through, like gold shining beneath paint. In a narrow street, as evening was falling, doors shut against us, curious heads watching our pain with no thought of helping us, we were shoved, kicked, beaten from wall to wall, made sport of by a foul band of abusers. They took delight in watching us fall, in seeing our skin rubbed raw against the harsh stones of the houses they threw us against, in hearing the crack of the bone in Brother Andrew’s arm. Our mildness counted against us. Our refusal to fight gave further fire to their rage, with blows and more kicks and blasphemous epithets. They did not understand that forbearance shames the aggressors and not the objects of their violence. And I knew they could not harm me because the saint’s prophecy protects me, but I do not think it extends to Brother Bernard and poor Brother Andrew.

  I interposed my body between our assailants and my companions and even if the prophecy were to fail, I was content to offer myself as a sacrifice. But this angered them further, as if they recognised the protection that watches over me, and they made no attempt to harm me but instead tried to find ways around me to hurt my beloved companions.

  And then our oppressors were scattered in a storm of hooves. A horse reared above us, its eyes wild, like those of the men who had been assailing us, a frenzy of blood and forgetting. Its rider, our deliverer, settled his mount, pulled it to stand still. He regarded us, as we pulled our cloaks around our damaged bodies. Brother Andrew’s beauty was unspoiled by the blood and the engorged skin swelling on his face. I wiped some of the blood away from my own face, but could feel that I was merely rubbing dirt into the wounds; and there was a voluptuousness in this; the dirt scratching and tearing at the lips of the wound brought me closer to Aude.

  Our deliverer looked most intently at Bernard, who was standing, moody, unbroken. He said,

  Why do you not fight back? You could fell an ox with a single blow.

  It was getting dark, moonless, and I had thought at first our deliverer was a giant on horseback, a hero worthy of legend; but his voice was no deeper than a girl’s and he was even younger than me.

  I replied, saying,

  We are not permitted to use violence. No Christian should.

  Your companions? Are they fools?

  They have little understanding of Italian. Only Latin.

  The boy knight, whom I later discovered to be named Prince Guido, said,

  It is the language of lawyers and clerics and knaves. Which are you?

  I told him, to which he replied with scorn, saying,

  What quality do the cleric and the cockerel share? They are the only beasts who feel no melancholy after fornication.

  He seemed to take no gratification in this remark, but neither did he acknowledge its obscenity. It was as if he was compelled to speak a necessary truth that he had learned at the table of his elders and thought it reflected well on him to share.

  But you speak Italian. What grants you the gift of languag
es? The Devil?

  This was not the place to tell him of my Master, of his pedagogic programme, of the quest for the Universal Grammar, to build the machine that would demolish the Tower of Babel.

  And, in truth, this knight was a little like my Master. He was young, and knightly, but there was the same temper of disputatiousness. But my Master, you are more urgent and more final, the need to prove yourself and to make, so many projects, in so little time.

  Come with me. We will clean your wounds.

  And he led us through the town as the night fell, up a hill and to a castle.

  My companions and I were placed in an upstairs room of the castle. I had lain in my bed imagining sleep to be impossible, despite my weariness, in this unaccustomed solitude, the wide dimensions of the room that held us. I have become used to sleep close to Brother Andrew, to hear his heartbeat, to feel it indivisible from my own, wake to Brother Bernard beside us cough and fart. And then I was so quickly asleep and for a great time, I think, until I was pierced awake by morning light, whereupon I lay in my bed, stilled by the silence, the great space around me, telling myself I would arise for my prayers when one of my companions should also rouse or when I should hear some sound from outside and then when I did hear women talking in the corridor, the voices of men outside my wall, I was made even more timid.

  Finally the sounds of Brother Bernard waking came to me, heard through the distance that separated us, and that lifted me. I prayed, I thanked God for bringing us this deliverance, and I went to the window and looked down into the courtyard where a pair of soldiers were arguing about the feet of a horse and where a kitchen maid was drawing water from a well and where a hawk was rising from the glove of a boy, and I watched the hawk fly and I said aloud the words that God spoke to Job, Does the hawk wax feathered by your wisdom, spreading her wings to the south, or at least I began to say these words, which were full in my mind but stopped dead on my tongue when I saw the bird fly over the white battlements, which were cut at the top in the shape of a swallow’s tail.

  Brother Bernard came to the window and I showed him what I had seen. My dread multiplied in the duration it took for his eyes to take in the shape of the battlements and for this image to travel into an understanding.

  We waited in our room. We grew hungry. We prayed. We took turns to empty our bowels into a pot, the contents of which Brother Bernard threw out of the window. Perhaps this is what alerted a serving man in the company of our deliverer to fetch us.

  He brought us into a grand hall with banners unfurled along its sides and long tables weighed down with immense quantities of food, the roasted carcasses of birds and beasts, rare fruits, white loaves of bread. He stopped Brother Bernard, whose hunger is larger than his fear, from reaching to tear a grape off its vine. We were instructed to wait at the back of the hall, to one side, and we watched as the hall filled, our deliverer’s party on one side, the host’s on the other, a table at the centre, where our deliverer, the haughty prince, sat between his father to his right, and a fearful girl, whose tremors and fear spoke for our own. Our deliverer is named Prince Guido, he is the son of Cavalcante de Cavalcanti, who is a great lord, who carries himself with measure and a solemnity that does not exclude the possibility of mirth. Cavalcante de Cavalcanti is a Guelph, contracting an alliance with his enemies through the agency of the body of his son. Prince Guido looked weary throughout the ceremony. His future bride is even younger than he is, and timorous, and shivered any time a word or even a look was directed towards her.

  Prince Guido’s father made a speech, and the girl’s father made a speech, and we were standing at the back of the hall, behind the tables of the Cavalcantis, and could barely hear any of it under the roar and complaints of our empty bellies.

  Brother Bernard was impressed by the grandeur of the occasion, the riches on display, the table in the centre of the room where gifts had been laid out, the grand costumes and silks and jewels, a cardinal splendid in red.

  And Brother Andrew too, protecting his injured eye against the light and colour and ceremony, he asked me what it was that was taking place, and I told him that it was a betrothal party, our haughty prince Guido was being transacted in future marriage to the shy shivering girl, of whom no signs of womanliness could be detected. And I said that we had to speak to the cardinal, find our way into his party; because he was on the Guelph side of the room and would be returning home after the ceremony no doubt to his master the Pope.

  They talked interminably, of the honour of their families, of the future union, of strife affecting Italy, which could be healed, the harmony of the country embodied in the betrothed couple. Prince Guido hardly ever looked at his bride, Beatrice Uberti, and he lost his haughtiness only when his father spoke to him, whereupon he became properly respectful.

  Several times I tried to move towards the cardinal as he ate, but each time I was held back by one of the servants. We were exhorted to eat, to delight in this incorporation of peace, but we were not permitted to move from our station.

  Belligerent looks passed between the Cavalcantis and the Ubertis. Young men of both sides hardly ate, kept their attention fixed on the movements of their supposed new allies, their brothers; and it was because of this that the ranks of either side were not to be broken, and it was because of this that we were not permitted to move, that I was not permitted to approach the cardinal, who was one of the first guests to leave, and when he did, it was with a great movement of farewells and kisses and the sound of horses outside and much bowing; and our opportunity had passed in which we might find safe passage through this territory of Ghibellines, when we might gain speed on our journey to his holiness the Pope, when we might gain time and distance on the second messenger.

  Instead, we were invited to ride back to the castle of our deliverers in the cart that brought the presents for the bride-to-be and her Ghibelline family.

  We rode to Cavalcante’s castle in the cart, delighted by the unaccustomed speed, hardly noticing the pain in our bodies when the cart rocked or jolted our injuries.

  When we arrived at the castle, we were assigned a room even more sumptuous than the one the previous night, which has confirmed Brother Bernard in his view that the Guelphs are in every way superior to the Ghibellines.

  And now, we wear other people’s clothes, voluptuous. We sleep on silken beds in rooms scented with rose water. And this is how it happened, my lord, this is how we came here, to this castle of white towers that shimmer in a moonless night, a place that might have been wished for in a dream.

  Saint Christina’s Day

  Christina, the devout, in a pagan household, smashed her father’s idols and distributed the gold and silver to the poor. Her father ordered her to be stripped and beaten by twelve men until they fell down from exhaustion. Then he had her bound in chains and thrown into prison. When she refused to worship the pagan gods, her father ordered her flesh to be torn off with hooks and her tender limbs broken; and Christina picked up pieces of her flesh and threw them in her father’s face, saying, Take that, tyrant! and eat the flesh you begot!

  Then her father ordered her to be stretched on a wheel and a fire of oil was lighted beneath her but the flames leapt out and killed fifteen hundred men. When it was night, her father ordered his henchmen to tie a large stone around her neck and throw her into the sea. But Christ himself came to save her, and baptise her, and commended her to the care of the archangel Michael, who led her ashore.

  Her father died that very night, but a wicked judge who was called Elius succeeded him. Elius had an iron cradle prepared and fired with oil, pitch and resin. Christina was thrown into this cradle and four men were ordered to rock it back and forth so she might burn more quickly. But Christina praised God, who willed that she be rocked in the cradle like a newborn babe. The judge, angrier than ever, had her head shaved and ordered her to be led naked through the city to the temple of Apollo. But she directed a command to the idol, which collapsed into dust; and the hateful judge was st
ricken with fear and expired.

  His successor had Christina thrown into a furnace. There, for five days, she walked about, singing with angels, and was unharmed. The judge Julianus had two asps, two vipers and two cobras put in with her; but the vipers licked her feet, the asps clung to her breasts without hurting her, and the cobras wrapped themselves around her neck and licked her sweat.

  Now Julianus had Christina’s breasts cut off, and milk flowed from them instead of blood. Lastly, he had her tongue cut out, but she, never losing the power of speech, threw the severed tongue in Julianus’s face, blinding him in the eye. Goaded to wrath, Julianus shot two arrows into her heart and one into her side, and she, pierced through and through, breathed forth her spirit to God. These events occurred in about the year 287, in the vicinity of Bolsena.

  My preaching does not attract an audience. I have learned, when meeting with indifference, to concentrate on blood and suffering. People like to hear the agonies of the martyrs. Brothers Andrew and Bernard make their amens, Brother Bernard goes around the few people listening to us in the courtyard but they just look scornful and go on their way and Brother Bernard’s hand is empty. The only ones left are a mother and her distressed child, who makes sharp intermittent shrieks like an idiot imitating a crow and holds himself.

  You are wise, the mother says to me.

  Not really, I say but Brother Bernard does not agree; seeing a possible advantage, he tells the poor woman that I am very wise.

  Maybe you can heal my son.

  I do not know if I can heal your son.

  Please heal my son.

  She tells me that he has not been able to empty his bladder in days. He is in pain, his idiot shrieks announce this. He holds his little penis and shakes it like a favourite pet who has inexplicably died.

  I tell her to wait in the courtyard, and I tell Brother Andrew to borrow some wine from the castle, and I go up the stairs into our corner room that’s built into the wall. I bring back the powdered root of iris that Father Gabriel gave me, and I mix it in the wine that Brother Andrew has brought in the proportions that my Master showed me when he was suffering from a similar malady.