John the Pupil Read online

  The rivers and the sea are inscribed in azure. The writer who drew the map is at work most of the days, and nights, sleepless and secret, because my Master needs him for his Great Work. The map is unfinished. The imaginary pilgrim may not travel to the Holy Land because the map stops short of Rome. The sea disappears and the land becomes sky because the scribe suffers from a need to draw lines and curves with azure in the margins of my Master’s work.

  I inscribe this on cuttings of parchment from my Master’s Great Work. At the end of the day, I sweep away the shreds from around the scribe’s desk and take what I require for my own work, a humble mockery of the true work. I do not think my Master begrudges me a little ink to make an account of my days.

  Saint Abran’s Day

  Once I knew how to herd goats, to fetch water without losing a drop, to make myself small against my father’s anger. Now I have become skilled in the art of gliding through the refectory and kitchen, to pick up bread, to lean over candlesticks and slice off small segments at the base of the candles, and on through the building, to the stairs, my arms folded, hands holding my spoils in the sleeves of my cloak. Our scribe needs food to eat and light to work by.

  It is harder to gather wine and beer. When I descend into the cellar, to tiptoe past sleeping Brother Mark, to lift away two bottles, to make my return journey past the sleeping sentinel, to climb back up into the corridor by the dormitory, I am almost as anxious as I used to be, when I first followed Master Roger’s instruction to fetch food for the scribe. I know that it is not stealing, he explained to me that it is not, but still I shake, and pray. I must take two bottles, because when Brother Mark makes his accounting of the cellar, he touches each bottle in turn, chanting, sing-song, Here is master bottle and here is his wife, here is master bottle and here is his wife … His reckoning is done by remembering whether there was an even or an odd quantity of bottles on the previous day.

  The scribe bemoans as he transcribes. He is being made to work too swiftly. It is the word, not its shape, that matters, Master Roger tells him, urging him on, Faster! Faster! I have written in the Book, in a rougher hand than the scribe’s, because Master Roger did not trust the scribe to draw Hebrew characters without understanding. Maybe, somewhere, a family is missing its father, a mother her son. The scribe shapes an azure line in the margin, he cannot help himself, a turn of thin colour that suggests the tip of a wave, a leafy branch of a tree. He sharpens his pen and wipes his face and looks around, as if for escape. There is none. He is here until the Book is finished or the world has ended.

  Or if the Principal discovers what Master Roger is doing in his room. There is an Interdiction cruelly upon him. He may not write or debate or disseminate, other than sequestered in the friary classroom with his appointed pupil. The Order suspects him of novelties, which is an accusation hardly short of heresy. Yet he may exchange letters with friends and outside patrons of influence whom the Principal and even the Minister General should not seek to offend. Master Roger’s rooms are turned into a single industry. It is all done in the utmost secrecy. The Book is secret, which is maybe as it should be. In antique times, Master Aristotle composed a commentary to kingship, power and wisdom for his pupil Alexander of Macedonia. Master Roger’s Great Work is the true successor to Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets. Many evils follow the man who reveals secrets, wrote Aristotle. The planets align, the Principal vexes, Master Roger writes the words on wax tablets for transcription, the scribe cuts them into the page. I steal a wheel of cheese from the cellar and draw an imaginary journey before picking up my own pen.

  We live in the Last Days. All things are temporary. The gates behind which Alexander enclosed Gog and Magog are falling. The horsemen are already abroad. In which case, I asked my Master, why should he, should we, make so many terrible labours to produce his Book? It is a work of majesty, indisputably, a magnificence of learning and opinion and ingenious device, which tells of the world and how it is viewed and the arc of the rainbow and the movements of the stars and of health and immortality and engines of war, all manners of things that would seem miraculous were they not founded on observation and deduction and Scripture, but, even if it is finished, even if it is somehow delivered and received by its intended Reader, would it not be for nothing? All things are known to the angels. They should not need to read it. And, as it has been written, the spread of learning will itself hasten the End Times. My Master hit me across the head with his Greek Grammar and commanded me to read and memorise the declensions of forty-nine nouns. It was as if I had accused him of vanity and pride, and maybe, thoughtlessly, I had.

  Saint Epimachus’s Day

  The winding blue lines of the scribe’s demon entered my dreams last night. They became a river in Eden, branches of the Tree, our Beginning as well as an End. I wonder what takes place in Master Roger’s dreams, whether he permits himself to imagine figures without end.

  There was trouble in the dormitory again. But I watched without attention. The day was so similar to the previous day, as it will be to the next. We beseech you O Lord, that the virtue of the Holy Spirit may be present unto us: which may mildly both purge our hearts, and also defend us from all adversities, through Our Lord Jesus Christ your Son: Who lives and reigns, God, with you, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.

  • • •

  Saint John the Silent’s Day

  The scribe’s hand shakes, the pages are almost filled. His escape is close at hand. Master Roger is almost merry. His Great Work is nearly made.

  And now, he said, we must talk about how we are going to deliver it.

  We? I said.

  The proscription is absolute against his leaving this friary which is his prison. For a moment my heart had leapt at the thought of accompanying my Master on a journey; but then I took his meaning as being abstract, that he was generously acknowledging my small part in his Work’s manufacture and kindly including me in a conversation about the method of its delivery.

  You, he said.

  Perhaps he mistook my silence for misapprehension, or fear, or simple stupidity.

  You, he repeated. You are the only one I can trust. You will take it to the Pope.

  A special mark of favour, an answering heart, or just the fate that the Lord bestows upon us somehow miraculously accords with what I most yearn for.

  You will go in three days, he said. The day and the stars are propitious. Ten plus seven.

  Numbers of perfection, I said.

  You will have companions, Master Roger said.

  Companions?

  The journey is too difficult for one boy to complete on his own. Do you have friends here? Whom do you trust?

  Despite my exhilaration, I was suddenly sad. I felt friendless, alone. Other than Master Roger, whom it would be an awful presumption to claim for a friend, I have no intimates, no ties of true affection. I have lived in this place for seven years and more and established no bonds of love. Maybe the journey will not be the thing of glory I have dreamed of, maybe there will just be the perpetual here and now, we carry with us the stain and the mark. And I was jealous too. This mission is too grand, too enormous to share.

  Who are your friends? There will be three of you.

  I thought of the dormitory I sleep in, the novices at play. I looked at the faces my recollection brought to mind, the companions I would not tire of, the friends I would like to share my adventures with, and my heart.

  Brothers Andrew and Bernard, I said.

  It shall be done, he said. And you will proceed with your writing to make a chronicle of your journey.

  How he knows of my secret writing, I do not know. I bowed my head.

  Yes, I said.

  And you will collect these treasures along your way.

  He gave me a list of the things I will be seeking. He also gave me a stack of parchment and three pens and a pot of ink for my writing.

  But do not tarry. If it is a choice between the speed of your journey and the search for these
treasures, stay on your road.

  Yes, I said.

  The way will be hard. You have so little experience of the world. The Devil extends his power into unlikely places. There are demons who look like men.

  Yes, I said.

  And women, he said.

  Yes, I said.

  God will direct you.

  Yes.

  He saw there was something that I needed to say. He asked me what it was.

  My father, I said, who lives in the village. I have not seen him in five years. I would like to take leave of him before I go.

  My Master did not say anything. He turned away.

  Downstairs, life proceeded as it always does, as if the world had not changed. Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Nones, Vespers, Compline. The sun rises, sets, rises again. We pray, give thanks, eat, drink, purge, sleep. God is good. The friary walls are cold against the skin.

  Saint Brendan’s Day

  Saint Brendan, the holy, sailed west with fourteen monks to find the island of paradise that prophecy had promised him. They sailed, in God’s name, and found the Island of Sheep by the Mountain of Stone, and they sailed on to an island on which the sailors lit their cauldron to prepare their food, but the island began to move and it was no island, but the great fish Jascoyne, which labours day and night to put its tail in its mouth, but may not, because of its great size, and the sailors fled and sailed fast away.

  And they landed on a fair island full of flowers and herbs and trees in which were great birds that sang all the hours of prayer; and they sailed on through tempests and trials to the island of holy monks who do not speak, and in mark of their great holiness have an angel to light the candles in their church; and they sailed on and fought great beasts of the sea and, through God’s will, escaped an island of fire inhabited by demons who strode across the water to assault them with burning hooks and burning hammers; and they met the great traitor Judas, naked, fleshless, beaten by the winds and the sea; and they met Saint Paul on the island on which he dwelled for forty years, without meat or drink; and on they sailed, through a dark mist to the fairest and most temperate country a man might see, all of its trees charged with ripe fruit, and precious gems scattered across the ground, and a river which no man might cross. They plucked their fill of the fruit and they gathered as many gems as they would, and all was replenished, for this was Paradise; and they sailed back to their abbey in Ireland, from which they had been gone seven years. Shortly afterwards, Saint Brendan, the holy, the mariner, full of virtues, departed from this life to the one everlasting.

  Consternation in the friary. Murmurs in the refectory, heads bowed in sharp telling. During the service of Vigils looks of pity and wonder were sent my way. After Lauds, I was summoned into the Principal’s rooms. Seldom have I spoken with the Principal. On a few occasions I have performed for him, for my Master to demonstrate my knowledge and, therefore, his pedagogy. I have always disliked these occasions, standing lonely and cold, unfriendly curious eyes upon me, to make recitations of Greek mathematics, of the houses of the constellations. I have never been in his rooms before. The Principal is a large man who has no love for Master Roger. He asked me what I had to say for myself. I had nothing to say because it did not seem opportune to demonstrate my command of tongues, ancient and present, or to recite my recent lessons in geometry and the nature of light.

  These are heavy crimes you are accused of, he said.

  Of what am I accused?

  It would be best to tell all.

  When I first made confession, I lied. I could not think of any sins to confess, so I invented some, gaining a consolation that at least on my following confession, I could confess to the sin of lying while making confession. But this was different. Was it my Master? Had the Principal learned of the Great Work, of the Mission to the Pope? Had the scribe reported of his imprisonment and labours? Did the Principal know of my part in the breaking of the Interdiction?

  It had been an act of pride to think that I could deliver the Great Work to the Pope. If I was so stuttering and undone with the Principal, it was unthinkable that I might ever presume to be in the presence of the Vicar of Rome.

  I have been guilty of the sin of pride, I said.

  Never mind that. Let me smell your breath.

  The Principal pulled me over to him roughly by the arm. A second time, he commanded me to breathe on him, which reluctantly I did. His own odour was not good, it tasted like neglected meat.

  Again, he said.

  I breathed on him again. He thrust me away.

  This proves nothing, he said. You will have to perform penance. You and the other two.

  I did not understand the purpose or meaning of the test by breath. But his reference to my two associates further strengthened my assumption that he was referring to Master Roger and the wretched scribe. We had broken the rules of our Order, of the blessed Saint Francis, of whom the Principal is a shadow. I was not concerned for myself. Happily, I would have taken all the blame but it could hardly be believed that it was I who had led my Master astray.

  I will be taking counsel in prayer now. Tell the other malefactors to visit me after Prime.

  He looked at me. I said nothing, deciding that in silence I should least harm my Master.

  You will tell them.

  Of course, My Lord. But, who?

  Brothers Andrew and Bernard. Tell them to visit me.

  I returned to the dormitory, gathered my writing materials and went into the shadow of the far wall that stands closest to my former village, where I write this now. I thought I detected the hand of my Master in this. I had not thought him malicious or vengeful. Was it because I expressed a desire to take leave of my father? But I could not believe he would take this kind of action against me, or threaten the mission to deliver his Book to His Holiness the Pope, or indeed make martyrs of Brothers Andrew or Bernard, sacrifice the innocents as well as his Great Work on a spiteful altar.

  Incline, O Mother of Mercy, the ears of your pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be unto me, a most wretched sinner, a pious helper in all things.

  My Master was delighted. He rubbed his hands together. His eyes shimmered.

  So, you have got yourself in trouble, he said.

  I do not know what I am supposed to have done.

  You have been stealing wine from the cellar.

  But I did this for you.

  You did not tell them that.

  I did not know what I was accused of, and nor would I have betrayed you even if I had.

  You are a good boy, he said.

  And then he beat my head with his hand, an action which hurt me but did not grieve me because I understood that it was an act of tenderness and acts of tender affection do not come easily to Master Roger.

  Because you are my charge, I have been permitted to decide upon the penance that will be required of you to expiate your sin. I believe that they think it right, perhaps restorative, that one under an Interdiction be put into the position of a judge. They have even permitted me to determine how to dispose of your fellows.

  But they are not guilty.

  Are we not all guilty? Did we not all participate in the sin of the Fall?

  I have never known my Master like this, so light and careless.

  Be that as it may, he said. I am going to make an unorthodox judgement in your cases. The Principal will accept it. I have decided that this crime is so great, its cupidity, its incontinence and greed, the gluttony it indicates, the treachery against your Franciscan brothers, these sins are all so large that nothing less than a pilgrimage would suffice to pardon them.

  My Master was smiling. His beard parted to reveal the paleness of his tongue, the yellow of his teeth. He reached his arm towards me but I was quicker this time and prepared for it and able to escape it this time.

  Slowly, the grace of understanding was being granted me.

  And where are we to go? I said feeling an answering smile on my own face.

  For these extraordin
ary crimes, my Master said wiping his mouth with his hand, it is deemed that nothing less is required than for you to travel abroad to his Holiness to ask forgiveness of the Pope.

  How? How did you order this?

  But my Master was laughing, and when he had stopped laughing, his mirth had been discharged.

  You will set out as we discussed. We have some preparations to make for your travels.

  I am going to Rome?

  Not Rome. The Papal court is in Viterbo. There is strife in Rome.

  And then he looked at me and around the room, the books, the crystals, the boxes of herbs, the scribe’s table bearing the drips of his ink and the scars of his pen, the four packets wrapped in heavy cloth that contain the seven parts of the Great Work; and then he looked back at me again and reached for me and held me to his breast and stroked my hair in a powerful and strange charity and whispered that there was strife everywhere and he wished me good fortune on the road I had ahead of me.

  Saint Restituta’s Day

  It is said that, From a clear spring, clear waters flow. A man is estimated by the company he keeps. Brothers Andrew, Bernard and I stood outside the friary. Master Roger kept reiterating the details of my mission. You will tell the Pope this, and this, and you will demonstrate the device to him, and you will insist upon the need for a more satisfactory translation of the Bible.

  The details of my mission are written on my memory. I had no need to be instructed in any of them.

  And you will take this bag for the gathering of treasures. And here is parchment for you to write on. If you find the opportunity, send communication to me. And you remember the details of your itinerary?

  I remember.

  Our Great Work is in this box. Do not dare open it.