Taking the Cross, page 22
Yet never had she felt the hot burning until touching the reading stone upon the board of her kitchen. The letter. It was the relation of the Beautiful Things not to the words of the letter but to the palimpsest, the writing underneath. That was the thing that so exercised the host of hell. The reading stone had enabled Eva, Pietro, and Claris to read the faint scraped again script. What of the other Beautiful Things? Had they all been sent to shed light on the palimpsest somehow?
It was difficult to think of the golden items as anything other than death itself. Tempted as she had been many a day to remove the letter to another place, she had believed its presence in the trunk was a hedge against the rise of liquid death. What would occur if mortality itself was released? She allowed not her mind to dwell there. Was death truly held captive inside her trunk, constrained merely by boards of cypress? She knew the Beautiful Things were not life, but was not fully prepared to believe they were death either. Her grasp upon the platter from which the little blue peas had issued forth had not felt as treacle.
Even as she questioned why, still she refrained from looking at the items once more. She was afraid of being made to probe death itself. Yet the coming of the pilgrim army and the poking of Claris had prodded her to take up the task anyway. She feared not for her own mortality but for the unchecked spread of death to those around her.
So she had shut up the chest once more and then sat on it, as if death could be so contained. Not bearing to look inside, but reluctant to leave. It gnawed at her that she knew so little of why she saw the black liquid. At length, she had risen and decided she would start with the blue peas. Show those to the bishop. She would revisit all else upon returning from Avignon.
Deliver us from evil.
It was nearing last light and Eva joined Pietro and Claris in the common under the pear tree. Pale orange and yellow shades of sunset filtered downward from the rim of the world into the low edges of the sky. Yet her thoughts were on the color blue. She dare not show her travelling companions the little stones in this open place. But where?
The house of the Painter.
Eva and Claris took their leave as prearranged through the West Gate of the community as the guards of the prince stood at attention. The knights were fully armored with hauberk and helmet and shield and the glint of the setting sun off the polished chain mail was dazzling. It made Eva think of angels and she had a momentary sense such beings were their fore and rear guard. It was a potent, almost intoxicating assurance. She thought also of the knight she had seen in vision in the orchard. Her spirit issued the briefest of prayers that such beings would safeguard him as well.
They walked up the hill as if the orchard was their destination. They were then to circle back through the woods nearby and join with Pietro on the road to Orange. Yet the orchard was their destination, as Eva needed to retrieve her bow and quarrels. Pietro had not spoken of why he thought Eva need bring them, and she did not ask.
Her tools of archery in hand, Eva and Claris walked south into the forest. There was some risk in traversing the wood. The forest was daily searched and cleared as necessary by Prince Guillaume’s men, so it was generally safe. Yet Eva had some trepidation as her and Claris entered the greenwood and emerged into the open beyond the sighting of the guard at the East Gate and joined with Pietro. They had weighed the risk of the forest against the risk of all three of them being seen leaving the community together, and the latter was perceived as the greater liability. Eva saw abandoned campsites and other evidence of habitation but no occupants in the wood.
The sun as it made descent in the west was still warm upon their backs as they walked the road to Orange. They encountered a few Beguines on the road making return to the community after a day of work in the city. Claris and Eva pulled their cowls forward and kept their heads down as they passed, but it mattered not since the tired Beguines they passed paid them no heed.
Pietro had expressed concern about the possibility of one of the Beguines in the community being an agent of l’orde.
The Bishop looked to the heavens and smiled. “It has been such a blessing to come here and know you at last, Eva.” He lowered his voice. “The hand of Deu is upon you, and your adventure is but in its infancy.”
Eva narrowed her eyes and looked at him askance. “Adventure?”
The bishop smiled but looked toward the orchard. “Many things are now in motion, and events will only rush faster.”
Eva looked toward the disk of the sun as it descended toward the edge of the world, its fire flaming out as day began its slow summer bleed into night. “The pace is dizzying as it is, but so be it. I need show you something at the villa of the Painter this very eve.”
“Can you not show us now?”
Eva shook her head. “Trust me. You will understand once we arrive.”
Claris was sober, quiet, not speaking lessons of the setting sun heralding the coming of peaceful night.
The Painter was at work when they arrived.
Eva walked to the wooden table and opened her bag. She liked, at times, to have a certain flair in what she did. “I have brought something to show to all.” She withdrew the scarf from the leather satchel and placed it on the broad table at the center of the studio, and untied it. One at a time, carefully, deliberately, she unbound each blue stone and laid them all out in a row. The room was silent. Twelve little spheres. “I have taken to calling these the blue peas. My guess is that they are some sort of bluish pearl, perhaps from India.”
Claris had the look of surprise. “India? From where did you obtain them?”
Some of her hair was in her face, and Eva flicked her head backwards, throwing her dark brown strands over her shoulders. “From the Beautiful Things. From a golden platter with hollow handles of mother of pearl.”
“You did not know of them before now?” Claris bore a look of bemused astonishment.
“I did not.” Eva’s attention was focused not on Claris, but on the Painter, who had remained silent but vigilant, and continued to look between her and the little stones. What of his thoughts? She wished him to speak. For the first time, she was excited about, felt connection to the Beautiful Things; there was no sticky black oil, no treacle-substance upon the bluish-green spheres. Yet the Painter remained silent. The man who never lacked for words, for wit, for a jest that provoked laughter and thought. Why did he not speak now?
The Painter kept his own council and remained wordless even when they departed for Avignon the following morn. Eva thought him pale, almost whitish about his face, a sight she had never beheld. No matter, she would charm from him the reason for his silence once he arrived in Avignon on the feast day of the Virgin Maria, nearly a fortnight hence.
They took their leave from Orange and trod the Via Agrippa until nearly midday, when they yielded to the heat and retreated to an inn for lunch. They were dining on roast pork and turnips when Pietro looked at Eva and said, “Why do you think there are twelve?”
“Twelve little blue peas? I cannot explain how I know, but I believe it a message from my paire.” Eva recounted how she had shaken the platter out of anger at her father and heard the rattling of the bluish pearls.
Claris frowned. “Believe not that the dead speak, Eva. I know you long to know your paire, but seek not such contact.”
Eva smiled and gently shook her head. “You are ever my mentor and guide. I do not speak of channeling the dead or of geomancy nor any form of divination. I but wonder if my paire, many years past, wished to send a message to me before he met his end. What has lain dormant has now been awakened.”
CHAPTER 27
2 AUGUST 1209
SABBATH
Andreas tarried in a darkened alcove of a hallway opposite a clear, leaded pane window. The moon, a bright full disc of light, illumined the courtyard of the Chateau Comtal beyond. He watched the Oriental Gate. It was safeguarded by a double portcullis. Robertz and Anfos stoically stood sentry, flanked each side like armored pillars.
The bells of San Nazare, la cathedrale of Carcassonne, began to ring out in clear, strong, defiant tones. The construction materials of the cathedral had been blessed by Pope Urban himself over a century past. It was only days after Urban had preached the first Crusade to conquer Jerusalem. Now a Crusade had come to Carcassonne, the first that had no pretext of going to the Holy Land.
The French had descended en masse upon the surround of Carcassonne the day previous. Another dramatic appearing that left him this time little moved. The enemy had refrained, albeit restlessly, from laying siege this day in deference to the Sabbath, but would not so refrain on the morrow, but a common Monday. At the moment Andreas cared not. For the past week, since his healing encounter with the man in blue, had he waited ardently for this night, the Sabbath gathering of the Bons Hommes.
It was compline. Robertz began to squirm as expected and then gyrate in his midsection like a small boy. He spoke a few words to Anfos, who frowned and waved him off as Robertz scurried from his post to relieve himself.
Loyal Anfos was now alone in guarding the Oriental Gate. Anfos, who when so bidden would refrain from ill-timed queries and words to others. Quite unlike Robertz, who would otherwise surely find means to inform Raimon Roger of Andreas taking his leave from the Chateau on the eve of battle, in the very hours before a midnight council of war.
It was forbidden for a sentinel to abandon his watch, ever more so in days of battle. Never had he seen Robertz do so unbidden. Yet the man in blue said it would be such this night. The God of Light would make a way. There were ways of avoiding the need to vacate one’s post. There were precautions Robertz must have neglected entire this night. Now a way out of the Chateau was made. Wishing as he did to remain unseen, the breach of ancient protocol by Robertz was a thing for which Andreas was grateful. This night, as he sought to take his leave unawares, he had willed the quitting into being. Spirit had prevailed over flesh. There would be no reprimand for Robertz, for in his neglect he had done Andreas good service.
The châtelain, dressed only in the coarse robe of a penitent, barefoot, two amulets suspended from his neck, quietly left the Chateau. The air seemed aswirl with dark vapors. Andreas followed the hazy shadows close around the perimeter of the courtyard.
Anfos nearly became as a dead man when Andreas approached him from the side at the gate.
The châtelain put a hand to the shoulder of the guard, held him steady. “If you saw not my coming, vigilant as ever you are, than neither did another soul in the Chateau.” Andreas breathed deeply. Being able to approach alert Anfos unawares imparted a thrilling, frightening sense of power, one that felt at once as soaring like an arrow in flight, yet free falling violently into the void. “Discretion is uttermost this night. I have a secret meet in la cite, a meet that may bring peace.”
Andreas did not elaborate on which sort of peace he spoke. At the moment, he was more concerned about having the calm pervade his soul than seeing it temper the conflicts of men.
Anfos, eyes still wide, swallowed hard, nodded, and quickly unlocked the gate and raised both portcullises.
Andreas held up both hands, palms outward. “As far as you have concern, I did not pass through here this night.”
Anfos’ face was ashen, unusually so, even awash in the yellow of moonlight. He appeared to quake ever so slightly, like a leafy sapling of poplar quivering in late spring’s breeze. “I saw only the approach of shifting shadows, my lord, and that is no lie.” His voice cracked, as if sprung from a throat parched by hot desert wind and dust. “Even now I scarce discern your face within the cowl.”
Andreas grasped firmly the shoulder of Anfos once more. “You are generous in your embellishment, my friend.” The châtelain forced a smile, abruptly turned, and walked briskly through the open gate, gratified at the aid from Anfos, not wanting to look upon him anymore. Andreas knew the words of the guard echoed truth for he felt himself ever more as a shadow. The thought prickled and he abandoned it as if depositing a thing despised among a dense patch of thorns.
The portcullises were lowered slowly behind him. The subdued but rhythmic click clack of iron wheels and chains and bars echoed in his hearing, reminded Andreas of a gaol, the prison of the body from which he sought freedom. It was the evil urgings of the body that had caused him to dismember. He knew this now.
Andreas stole across the wooden moat bridge and through crowded streets toward the house. The one spoken of by the man in blue. Andreas knew it as the residence of the jeweler who was considered the most skilled in Carcassonne, perhaps in all the Languedoc.
There was no entering this night through the great gilded door fronting the house on the street of the jewelers. The man said the spies of the Bishop of Carcassonne and of Armand Amaury himself were everywhere present. Andreas need dress as a mendicant. He need use the entry for the servants in the alley to the rear of the house.
There was no living thing in the narrow backstreet. Not even cow or pig, perhaps the only place in Carcassonne thus vacant. It had been kept clear, of such there could be no doubting. Whether the feat was accomplished by hidden guard or sorcery he knew not, but it was no happenstance. The air seemed to thicken as he advanced, shrouded the center of the alley. A person standing at either end of the constricted way could not see the other end, nor even as far as the center. The wooden door was halfway down the alley on the right as he had been told, but he saw no one there. Instead, he heard his name spoken in low tones, but saw not the source of the voice. “Andreas, halt your steps.”
He heard a sliding of stone and cobbles moved. In front of his feet a hole appeared in the very center of the alleyway, perhaps two feet square. Without the admonition his next footfall would have carried him tumbling unawares into the opening before him.
There was a scraping of wood on stone and the top of a ladder appeared just below street level. A single word in a voice guarded and raspy rose from below. “Enter.”
He was to climb down the ladder. The ladder held more rungs than he had expected and took him farther than two stories beneath street level. The air grew cool and damp as he descended. He could not see beyond the ladder, but his nose caught the burning of beeswax. His bare feet went from the bottom rung to cool dry stone. Chilled air filled his lungs and momentarily robbed him of breath. His eyes watered and his body shivered a minor tremor.
While another slid back the cobbles above at street level and then descended and pulled down the ladder, the cowled silhouette of a man took his wrist and led Andreas down a stone-lined square passage, around a corner, then another turn and yet another still, until Andreas had lost all track of whence he had walked. He thought the tunnels slanted ever slightly downhill, but could not be sure. At length, tendrils of yellowish light flickered round a corner and he emerged into a chamber where others in the beast-colored robes of mendicants had gathered. They stood on what appeared a perfect unbroken circle etched in the honey-colored sandstone floor, facing outward.
One in a blue robe spoke. “The secrecy is necessary in these days when agents of the enemy are already among us in la cite. Welcome, Andreas. Long have we watched you from afar, knowing your soul would prosper amongst us.”
Andreas squinted, allowed his eyes to amend themselves to the light of candles, which seemed vivid after traversing the long, dim passage. There were perhaps two dozen people in the chamber, men and women seeming equal among them in numbers. He shook his head and spoke without thought. “How shall my soul prosper among you? I have committed sacrilege. I dismembered a man, hewed limbs and head from body. Forever will my soul be barred from heaven. There is no peace in my innermost.”
The chair in the center of the circle fell under his sighting.
The cowled one in blue motioned toward the only seating place in the chamber. “The chair is for you, Andreas. We bid you sit. We open all meetings with a simple prayer. Let us pray over you with the laying on of hands. Such will calm your troubled soul and draw you inside our circle.”
He felt a sensation of warmth flow over him. Andreas relaxed his body and walked into the circle through the singular opening provided, as if those gathered awaited only his presence to be rendered whole. He sat down in the unadorned wooden chair that lacked paint or even varnish. He looked around and realized that twenty-four souls did indeed surround him, twelve men and twelve women. All stepped forward and closed in on him. As many as were able placed bare hands on his shoulders and cowled head and he grew warmer still. A light not of a candle became manifest and spread through the chamber. Somehow small shadows, geometric points of blackness—triangle, circle, and square—mingled with the luminescent glow. They merged together, separated, and merged once more.
The one in blue began the prayer. “God of Light, we gather here this night underground. Hidden away at risk of life and limb, for the agents of darkness are ever around us. Even as the armies of the god of this world surround this stronghold of the light, show us the pure way, the way of perfection. This supplicant, for whom we lift up our prayers, comes among us this night with a spirit in turmoil. A spirit trapped inside a body infernal. A spirit twice bound by the lies of the Catholic Church and of the Valdenses. Let him abandon the vile of the sacraments. As if any are truly in need of the flesh and blood of the Eucharist or the water of baptism for salvation. For such things of the corporeal are but an illusion for the foolish, the weak of mind. They are a mere creation of the devil, the maker of all things seen. For you issued forth, Jhesu, from the God of Light as a spirit only. A spirit with no body who came to bring wholeness and light. Shine forth your light of the spirit then. Make this man before us whole. May his eye be single. Fill him with light. Cleanse him from all lies. Scour from him all things of the devil. May he ever dwell in the circle ethereal.”
There was silence for some moments, then the sound of a long, slow, raspy intake of breath. The breath was released in a distinct, scratchy tenor of speech. The voice of an aged woman. Andreas thought of the ideal of the wise old hag. “I sense this man before us has made journey for many turns of the wheel, revolutions of life and migrations of the soul beyond counting.” The sound of her voice swelled in anticipation like a rising great wave grasping for shore. “His spirit is aged and well-traveled. I see it. Yes. He has made residence in ancient Rome. There he walked the seven hills in the days of Augustus Caesar; there he sought the wisdom of Minerva. In Greece, he talked with sages and learnt still more of wisdom, partook of the richest mead in cups of gold. Yes, he drank the honeyed nectar of the gods, drank deeply of Ambrosia.” Her hand gripped more tightly his shoulder. “Pythagoras he walked with, listened at his feet. This man knows the ethereal mysteries of numbers and shapes in his innermost, what is visible and what is unseen. Yet he can unlock them only if he looks within, deep within to the still small voices, the voices of Mary of Magdala and of Minerva, they of temperance and wisdom. He need join with them in spirit.”
