Elixa, page 5
part #0.50 of The Torcal Trilogy Series
But other fears were less easily displaced. Now she feared that at least Brother Grigori would move to stop her reading these books. He had often said that he did not believe that simple people should read the scriptures, let alone notable books of knowledge. Brother Luis was of a different mind but, while she knew that he could easily enough be persuaded to recount scripture over a glass of wine, many of these books had the look of objects that would be declared blasphemous by the stricter monk. And Elixa knew that Grigori would prevail in forbidding them to be read, least of all by just a girl who all too often did not know her place well enough.
She rose up and stretched her shoulders to ward off the tension from her thoughts. She wished dearly to share this news, but she had to first gain a promise of secrecy from the abbot.
She doused the lanterns, mouthing silent thanks to whatever long departed hand had prepared them, and headed carefully back down the stone stairway. If nothing else, she must immediately tell Brother Luis about the miracle of the lake.
And the Moon Goddess called Luna.
The hidden chamber with its library of books was going to be a more complicated story to tell. How could she say she had been led to it by the Moon Goddess? If anyone would misinterpret this as something evil or to be feared, it would be Brother Grigori. And she did not want him to know about the books in La Roca.
Not yet.
He would not permit them to stay at the abbey. With his fixation upon the constant lures of hell and damnation, he might even decide to burn the books.
Although Elixa could feel in her heart that she had been sent the sacred Luna stones, led to this place for a purpose, she was also just a girl, without influence or power. She needed to convince the only person in a position of authority of the wonderful nature of the blessing they had been sent.
Brother Luis.
8
Elixa ran, panting, into the library. For a moment she stopped and stared. She had been into this tranquil chamber almost every day of her life. Yet today, after finding the stash of hidden and forbidden books in a cold, dark cavern, she was captured anew by the beauty of the abbey’s library.
Several monks sat in groups reading. The scribe leaned over a table beside a shelf full of books. It was his task to reproduce books that were of such value and so important that they needed at least two copies. His quill scrolled elegant letters into a large book. His cape was pushed back from his head and his bald crown shone in the light from the nearby window, while thick black locks of hair from around it curled into his habit’s hood.
Another Brother carried a stack of metal bound books from one shelf to another. If only these monks could see what she had just seen! But they could not, not yet. No one must know until she was sure it was safe to tell them. Until it was the right time to reveal her incredible discovery.
Large arched windows sent shafts of sparkling light amongst the monks. One fell upon two monks who were caped with heads bowed, and hands tucked into the large sleeves of their brown habits.
They were praying silently for one another. Brother Luis had started this odd tradition to ensure the monks did not only pray for themselves, but shared blessings amongst themselves thus making their devotions more communal.
Books lined the opposite wall and a few wooden chairs were carefully placed in the sunny spots where backs could be warmed, and where older eyes found reading the books easier.
One of these was taken by Brother Luis. He called out in a soft voice, ‘Ah, Elixa, come child, I have been examining your inventory of the books. You have done a fine job, but there is much still to be done.’
She slipped into the chair beside him and dropping into a whisper as one or two other monks frowned in her direction, recounted her story about the lake.
Brother Luis’ eyebrows had risen as though they were trying to ascend to his hairline during the tale. He leapt up, tottering slightly, and cried out to a younger monk sitting nearby, ‘Go and find Brother Grigori and tell him this is a matter of urgency. Quickly! And fetch Brother José and Brother Zachariah over here.’
These last two were the monks praying for each other.
While she waited, Elixa realised that this was the fifth day since she had heard about the hidalgo who would come to catch her and take her away from her home. That was how she perceived it. Not as a marriage.
She had so little time left and so much to do. Mentally, she checked her list. Find a way to convince Brother Luis of stopping the betrothal. Sway Enrique into not just noticing her, but also asking for her hand. Read the forbidden books. Study the stones.
All of that in less than a week and a half.
The abbot disturbed her thoughts as he took her arm and, gesturing towards the other three monks who were now approaching together, said, ‘Lead the way.’
It seemed to Elixa that the monks, stumbling along where she ran like a goat, took an age to reach the lake, but finally they stood at its edge.
The abbot and Brother Grigori stood side by side. They were so different. The abbot short and round, and appearing even more so with Brother Grigori’s tall and bony frame as a sharp contrast.
Their characters were different too. The abbot was softly spoken. He listened and waited before giving his opinion, whereas Brother Grigori would object loudly and without consideration of the person’s feelings. And if his mind was even capable of mulling over new information, he certainly never allowed it the time to do so.
Now, they stared at the lake in shock. The abbot with a beaming smile of reverence, the tall, gaunt monk with a scowl of suspicion.
‘Our merciful Father!’ Brother Grigori murmured. ‘Where did it come from?’
Elixa explained what she had seen. She had to confess that it was the night of the thanksgiving service and that was why she, and no one else, had seen the firestorm.
‘As a God-fearing maiden, you should have been at the service,’ Brother Grigori scolded.
‘Never mind that now,’ Brother Luis clucked, ‘it is this wondrous well of water that is our concern.’
Brother Luis was, or at least had been an enquiring man. Whilst he went about his daily tasks and rituals bothering nobody and without complaint, Elixa suspected that deep down he had long since ceased to really believe in them. Yet neither did he question God. He had found an easy path, and if he ever lacked contentment on that path then it was nothing that could not be fixed by his wine costrel. For this reason, Elixa understood it would be up to her to push him to understand the miracle.
Grigori, on the other hand, hated anything new. He was an enemy of change and open mindedness. He denounced anything he could not understand, quickly and with vigour. And that was exactly his reaction now. ‘God preserve us! This lake is surely cursed. Yes! An unnatural temptation sent to snare us, to lull us into indolence by abandoning the labour of collecting the water from the valley through which our merciful God teaches us. This is the work of the devil!’
Elixa’s brow knitted. ‘But we need no longer struggle for water. The strength of our men can go towards repairing those of our buildings which are falling, towards the growing of food that our winters might be less lean. Surely that is a miracle?’
Brother Grigori’s face became dark and he was about to deliver a firm rebuke when one of the younger monks moved to dip his sandalled toe in the water.
Grigori cried out, ‘Do not touch the water! The devil shall take you!’
Startled, the monk scrambled back, away from the edge.
Brother Luis frowned and motioned for calm with his hands. ‘There could be something in what Elixa tells us.’ He turned to her and asked, ‘Tell me again, child, I need to see this happening in my mind.’
Quietly, and with a patience that she had to struggle to possess, she again explained exactly what she had seen. This was the second time she had told them, yet she did it thoroughly, deliberately emphasising the connection to the moon’s fire a few days before.
Brother Grigori scowled, ‘God Almighty preserve us from the made up tales of this foolish girl. What has the moon to do with water? To speak thus of the moon is akin to worship, and I for one will not listen to such words that will corrupt the soul. Only the devil and the witches that he sires worship the moon.’
‘I too saw the moon on fire,’ Brother Luis said in a soft voice to back up Elixa’s story. It was the softest of reprimands, but the other monk glared at Elixa with daggers in his eyes, blaming her for it.
‘And then only some days later do these stones allegedly fall from the sky? Why not at the same time, if they are related to this fire you say you saw in the moon?’ Glancing meaningfully at the abbot’s wine costrel for the benefit of the two younger monks, Brother Grigori rubbed his domed head and grunted like the abbey’s pig. He had often done that while tutoring, and if any new children sniggered, he would slap them over the back of their heads with a cane.
Elixa hesitated. She wanted to tell them everything about the notion of the Moon Goddess that had come to her, but she sensed that she was treading on unexpectedly dangerous ground and she feared Brother Grigori’s response.
Instead, she tried to put a thought into Brother Luis’s mind. ‘Brother Luis, could it not be that God sent this water in answer to your prayers?’ She handed him a small Luna stone and pointed at the crystals, which were now still and dark, inside the X. ‘I think God has sent us these sacred stones. See they are embedded with stained glass windows, just like the ones at the chapel.’
Brother Luis leaned closer and studied it.
‘See, Brother Luis, it bears the same letter as your name. X for Ximenez and an X that is in my name. I think it is a sign from God.’
‘Nonsense! Brother you must take a firmer stand against this devil’s talk.’ Brother Grigori snatched the stone and squinted at it. His beady eyes moved around in their sockets. Whenever he did that, the schoolchildren grew silent with fright.
Elixa took a deep breath and steeled herself. ‘I am also reminded of the ancient Roman myth, Luna. She is the divine embodiment of the Moon. In the Roman books we possess in the library, Luna is often presented as the female match of the sun, and a Roman Goddess.’
Brother Luis’s frown deepened, and he raised a hand as if to bid her be silent.
She quickly added, ‘I think…God has sent us an angel in the form of Luna, our Moon Goddess.’
‘Blasphemy!’ Brother Grigori shouted. He threw the stone out over the water.
It splashed in and sunk to the bottom.
Grigori’s face took on a different aspect, outrage seeming to become suffused with cunning. ‘Elixa it is no secret that you have been unfairly favoured, perhaps told of things that your young mind should have been protected from’, and here he glanced at Luis, whose eyes were cast to the ground, ‘But I urge you now to have a caution. You understand not of what you speak. You understand not the danger into which you place your immortal soul by uttering such words as will anger our merciful God. It is well that you told me of this curse that has befallen our community. You have done well in that, but now you must pay heed and seek repentance for presuming to understand what has happened here in our mountain home.’
Elixa bit her lip. She wanted to tell him that it was not his mountain. He hardly ventured out of his wine cellar, never mind out of the abbey gates. She had never seen him walking in the countryside or through the beautiful labyrinth of rocks as some of the younger monks did. They would find a shady spot with their prayer books and chant quietly to themselves, surrounded by peace and solitude. Brother Grigori had never done that, so how could he call this mountain his own?
Brother Grigori, becoming more animated again, shook a bony finger in the air. ‘Ezekiel tells us that the Lord God said “In My wrath I will release a windstorm, and in My anger torrents of rain and hail will fall with destructive fury,”.’
Like everyone else, Elixa’s eyes were glued to his pointing.
The monk shouted louder, ‘When God pronounced judgement upon the fallen Lucifer, He said that He will cast him out of the mountain of God and destroy him from the midst of the stones of fire.’ His hand gestured to indicate the stones around the lake. ‘The stones of fire God spoke of were in the mountain of God. Much the same as our mountain.’
Elixa bit her lip, struggling not to argue with the fervent monk. That was a sin, another that she often disobeyed.
Brother José, the monk who had almost dipped his toe in the water and was still standing at the lake’s edge, questioned, a thoughtful look on his scholarly face, ‘Could it not be possible that “stones of fire” could be translated as “glittering stones” and perhaps found in heaven?’
Brother Grigori looked shocked that one of the younger monks had had the audacity to question him. ‘No! This passage is saying clearly that the devil, Lucifer,’ he spat out the word, ‘was in Eden, the garden of God. Similar to this haven we have here at Torcal.’
The abbot now interrupted, ‘Whichever it is, the stones of fire are never mentioned again. As we never hear more about them, they are, as that scripture is, one of the mysteries of the Bible.’
‘God be merciful upon us! This is not some intellectual puzzle to be talked over with all vigilance cast aside, Abbot. That is how Satan gains entrance into us and poisons our souls. Can you truly not see the devil at work here?’
Luis was perspiring visibly and Elixa watched the hand that rested beside his wine flask as it shook visibly and needed an effort to keep it under control. As with all moments of tension, she could see that he wished only to make this go away, but the world, and in particular Brother Grigori, was not that kind-hearted. Finally, he replied, ‘No, I do not believe that. However, I would like to understand more, to shed some light on the relevance of the falling stones Elixa spoke of. And in what way it is associated with this sudden appearance of a lake on our mountain.’
Elixa agreed with him, but dared not say anything.
Grigori watched, paused, as Brother Luis stroked his beard thoughtfully, ‘God may have sent us this water. And if he did, it certainly would be holy water. God knows we have been praying for rain long enough.’
Now came the vehemence again. ‘Yes, but this was not rain. As far as Elixa tells us, this water came straight after these fiery stones were cast, just as Lucifer was cast, from heaven. I tell you, this is the devil’s work. He is doing this to tempt and deceive us. We must never touch a drop of it! It may poison us! Worse, it may damn our immortal souls to eternal purgatory!’
Elixa’s hand flew to her face and she almost choked.
‘What?’ Brother Grigori spat out.
Her hand closed over her mouth and her mind whirled, confused.
‘Spit it out, girl.’
‘I…I have already drunk it. It has not poisoned me.’
‘Stupid girl! How could you do such a thing? Have you no sense?’
‘But it looked fresh and I was thirsty.’
‘That is exactly how the devil tempts us. Dear merciful God, did you not listen to anything I said in the classroom?’
She was about to hang her head in shame, but something deep inside refused to give in to him. ‘I am sorry, Brother Grigori, for my ill-considered haste in tasting the water, but I am not sorry that I did.’
‘What?’ He spluttered, his beady eyes bulging.
‘It is delicious. The best water I have ever tasted. It is pure and sweet, much better than the water down in the valley.’
‘I do not believe it!’ Brother Grigori flung his hands in the air. ‘As God is my judge, this girl has lost all her wits. We shall have to pray for her salvation.’ He swivelled and jabbed a bony finger towards Elixa. ‘And you, as well as for the wisdom to accept the teachings of your superiors, and for humility, you must pray for forgiveness!’
While the cadaverous monk’s attention had been focussed on Elixa the two younger monks, released from his spell, had edged gingerly forward to the water and dipped their cupped hands in to taste it.
Seeing them, Brother Grigori cried out, ‘Stop!’
The abbot, meanwhile, hobbled over the pebbles and stood watching the monks. ‘And?’
Brother José glanced up at the abbot. ‘It is as Elixa says. The water is delicious.’
Brother Grigori was immediately at his side. ‘Do not touch it! No more!’
‘I think they will be fine if they have not been struck down instantly,’ the abbot mused with his arms crossed over his rotund stomach. ‘We can drink―’
‘No!’ Brother Grigori interrupted, pulling the abbot’s arms open. ‘Do you not see? The devil is tempting us with this water. Just as he did to Adam with Eve’s forbidden fruit. That water born in fire should taste so delicious is sure proof of exactly that. The risk here is not to simple flesh; it is to our God given souls! Please, Abbot, you must listen to me.’
In silence, Elixa had watched the two men argue. Brother Luis held the authority, and if completely convinced he could hold sway over Brother Grigori. But therein lay the problem; the abbot lacked the other’s certainty and force, and until he could match it Elixa could see that Brother Grigori would prevail.
It would be up to her to make the abbot believe and see the miracle’s truth.
The rest of the monks were gentle creatures who would do whatever the abbot said, so long as he could summon the will to command them. The two who stood here were already eager to drink, but, like everyone in their small community, they cowered in fearful awe of Brother Grigori’s self-righteous temper.
Elixa had said enough. For today anyway.
Tomorrow she would gather all the sacred stones and hide them in the burial chamber so she could study them, perhaps learn more about them from the books when no one was around. Then she would speak again to the abbot, in private.
And once again she would attempt to explain her belief that God had sent an angel, the Luna Goddess, to watch over them.
This miracle would only truly be theirs if they could unreservedly accept it.
