Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

A Benedictine Monk comes to my chamber, places a lighted candle in my hand. His dark eyes gloat like coins in the amber light, and he talks to me of my coming death as if it were his alone to comprehend.

  Imagine if you will, Madam, a vast, cold ocean, and on that ocean, a sailing barge. And you upon that vessel, with the thousands of souls who have died that day, from every nation on this Christian Earth.

  And ahead of you on the seas you behold, rising to the very clouds, a mountain.

  This, Honourable Madam, is Mount Purgatory. And this is the mountain that you, in penance, must ascend.

  And think, if you will, that every one of your sins is a block of stone. And think, if you will, of this mountain, that reaches even to the Heavens. And think, if you will, that you must climb, and bear every burden, every block of stone, until the very summit of that dreaded peak.

  First you climb, one day, bearing the stone that marks your very first sin. Then, the second day you must descend the road you have already come, and collect the burden of your second sin, and ascend again. And again and again and again and again, bearing on your back the weight of your sins, up and down, and up and down again . . .

  Imagine, Madam, if you will, this penitent climb . . . lasting not for days. Lasting not for years. But for . . . Centuries!

  He’s good, this Monk. There are even glistening tears in his golden eyes.

  But I have here, Madam, some remedy. And he pulls from his cloak a parchment scroll. The seal is stamped with two crossed keys, the Seal of Rome.

  This dispensation, sealed by the hands of the Holy Father himself, will shorten your journey . . . by a thousand years.

  For fifty marks of silver, I can here inscribe your honoured name . . .

  My Brother, My Keeper, My Purse-Bearer, has been listening outside the half-closed door. And now Emmle comes, laughing, and takes the candle from my lifeless hands.

  “My Sister thanks you, Brother. But you may keep your Pardon Scroll. And leave immediately, lest I kick your scraggy arse all the way back to Rome.”

  † † †

  To cheer me up, they talk about my funeral. How my coffin will be fashioned in varnished oak and borne by Master Drapers from the Guild I helped found. How Mass will be sung at the Morning Altar, the Altar I helped fund. How my silver pennies from my charity chest will be given out in alms. How they have no less than six monks, four silver candlesticks borne by altar boys, the Cathedral Choir to sing the psalms.

  But what’s that to me? I will already be gone, and my Soul already on the shores of Purgatory, my hands, now full of ghostly life, clutching at the penitent stone.

  My thanks to Emmle, that evil fox. I have no need of Dispensations, no need of Pardons from the parchment workshops of the Papal Throne. For, on those distant shores, a Ghost, I will have my voice again.

  Good Lord, I pray that it is not a Sin, but I know my Penitence will be brief. Those two coins they place upon my sightless eyes, I will put to profitable use. I, Grete Gerber, will arrive upon the Purgatorial Shore, and I will trade and bargain, I will wheedle and cajole until I have porters aplenty to shoulder the stones that are inscribed to my soul.

  And palanquin bearers to carry me aloft. And fine food for my workers, hot soup and warm, Lenzenbach bread. And the Angels will chide me and say, “Mistress Gerber, this is NOT the way it is done!” And I will say, In heaven as it was on earth, I have never listened to anyone.

  I will climb that Mount the way I’ve climbed up out of this mortal vale. From mud and clogs and piles of dung to silver and gold and mother-of-pearl.

  And it won’t be long before I’m in Paradise, resting my weary feet in a heavenly stream. And I’ll look down from my cloud at the Cathedral of Hagenburg, that my committee is now helping to build. And I’ll see the monks singing mass in my name. And I’ll see my farrow, waiting to throw my casket in the freezing ground.

  And I’ll ask a passing Cherub for a pitcher of wine. And I’ll drink to myself. For I know what I’ve done, and every deed I’ve done was Mine.

  † Grete Gerber

  (1216–1271)

  ANNO

  1273

  VON LENZENBACH

  (ANNO 1273. EMMERICH VON LENZENBACH

  NÉ SCHÄFFER IV)

  To His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Rudolf von Habsburg, from Emmerich Schäffer, Secretary to the Bishop of Hagenburg.

  Your Imperial Majesty,

  Allow me to attach to the missive of my Master, His Grace Eugenius von Zabern, Bishop of Hagenburg, my own brief, humble letter.

  It is with great joy that we in Hagenburg have heard of your election to the Throne of the Holy Roman Empire, and with even greater joy have learned of your intention to visit our city. Please be assured of Hagenburg’s support and loyalty. I look forward, as spokesman for the Bishop on political matters, to discussions with your representatives as to how we can be of service to You, especially in your ongoing dispute with the Bishop of Basel. It will be Hagenburg’s honour and joy to provide you with men and arms for your campaign.

  I feel deeply humbled by the Honours you have bestowed upon me, Honours of which your Clerk has informed me in his missive, and the terms of which I hereby agree.

  With your Imperial Majesty’s permission, I shall take the name of “von Lenzenbach,” as I myself was born in that verdant vale, and it is where my estates are located.

  I remain your faithful and loyal servant,

  Sir Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  † † †

  To My Lady Baroness von Ahrenheim, from Knight Emmerich von Lenzenbach.

  My dear Lady,

  It is with jubilation that I have received today your missive regarding my proposal of Marriage. The conjoining of our hands will redound to the benefit of both our Houses, conferring upon me Honour and Pedigree, and upon your House, an end to the financial woes that have beset you. I hereby accept all the terms negotiated on your behalf by your cousin, Canon von Lichtenberg. By way of allaying your final concerns, please accept my assurances that the slanderous lies spread by my enemies that I have offspring from a previous illicit liaison (with a Jewess no less!) have no foundation. Success and advancement breed envy, and envy breeds slander and falsehood.

  I am impatient to conclude our happy union, and to greet you in Haus Lenzenbach as my honoured and cherished Wife. Yet please forgive me, My Lady, if I ask of you to delay this happy occasion until the stars shine more favourably upon us.

  My Lord and Master, His Grace Eugenius, is now gravely infirm. The doctors inform me that it cannot now be long before the Lord calls him to his side. And so I must unwillingly ask of you Patience until this sad day has passed, and the election of His Grace’s successor is established, before our hands may be joined in Matrimony.

  I beg for your Understanding, and thank you from my heart for your Forbearance,

  Your happy husband-to-be,

  Sir Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  † † †

  Judah Rosheimer,

  Borek Village, The Duchy of Kalisz

  Dearest Yudl,

  As I have heard nothing further from you since your last missive, I must conclude that you are resolute in your decision not to return to Hagenburg. I therefore must tell you that I will now disband Schäffer and Associates. The substantial burden of my other duties prevents me from giving the company my full attention.

  I therefore, for the avoidance of any future doubt, here disclaim any further debt and obligation to you. You shall have no claim on my estate or that of my descendants.

  Yours in affection,

  The Strawhead Goy

  † † †

  To Bishop Elect Konrad von Lichtenberg, from Knight Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  Your Grace,

  My grief and sadness at the passing of my much honoured Master Bishop von Zabern is almost surpassed by my joy at the news o
f your election. If I could play but a small role in your success, then I am most glad of it.

  I accept with deep gratitude and humility my appointment as Councillor of the City of Hagenburg. In my view our most urgent task will be to regulate and contain the growing power of the Guilds and craftsmen in the body politic of our City. They must be listened to, and appeased with small concessions to their importunate demands.

  I await your summons. As soon as you need my services, I will hurry to be of assistance.

  Yours in obedience,

  Sir Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  † † †

  To Haider Schulte, Master Painter,

  from Councillor Sir Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  Honoured Master Schulte,

  Thank you for accepting this commission at the agreed price. The (empty!) coin strongbox in question will be delivered to you, along with this letter, by my valet.

  Your task is as follows: to remove the present embellishments (Star of David, crest of the town of Rosheim, lettering in the Hebrew language etc.) and retouch the lacquerwork accordingly. Then, on all four sides of the strongbox, paint, to the finest of your ability, the crest of the House of Lenzenbach, the stencil for which my valet shall deliver to you herewith.

  Payment shall be made on your delivery of the finished article.

  Yours, with respectful greetings,

  Councillor Sir Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  INFINITY

  (ANNO 1273. EUGENIUS VON ZABERN X)

  The Good Lord knows, I have not been one to embrace life on this earth with joy and enthusiasm. I have rather considered my Existence as a continuous trial, an inexorably burgeoning list of tasks which I leave, now that my life is coming to its End, unsatisfactorily unfinished.

  And yet I am afraid of Death, and my body cleaves to Life as a babe to his mother’s breast. In vain I offer myself the consolations of Philosophy, that all flesh is as grass and must wither and die, that my existence itself is a miracle that I received without volition and must therefore relinquish with serenity. In vain I meditate on the revelations of Theology, that after Death there will be a Resurrection, another life in the spirit, the hope of Paradise.

  All in vain. Even in its depleted, exhausted state, my flesh clings to existence and trembles with Life.

  † † †

  For some time now, I have relinquished the uses of this world, abdicated from the duties of my office, entrusted power into others’ hands. In so doing I have been cautious not to give away too much actual Power, but rather the accoutrements and vestments thereof, dispensing to those hungry for influence those daily tasks and responsibilities carried out in the sovereign’s name.

  For instance, if you had told me as a young Treasurer that the building of the Cathedral could be put into the hands of the citizens, I would have laughed at you. With what virulence I hated the New Cathedral and its drain on the Diocese’s resources and indeed on my own time and vitality. But what better solution than to remove the burden of its construction from the Church and to place it on the broad, vigorous shoulders of the People?

  Our fortunate, present Treasurer, Canon von Hagen, has had only on occasion to cast his eye over the Fabric Committee’s accounts—unlike my younger self, he has lost no sleep over the funding and administration of the Cathedral’s construction. And, under the management of the citizens’ committee, work has proceeded apace, the old Western towers have been fully dismantled, and the foundations dug for the new high, majestic, Western Façade.

  I have not forgotten my promise to Bishop Berthold, the promise I made when he himself was on his deathbed, to stay true to his vision of creating the finest Cathedral in the German Lands. And to this end I have appointed as Dombaumeister the young Albrecht Kaibach. Under my predecessor, Heinrich von Stahlem, the work proceeded at a slovenly pace and the unity of design and form of the Bishop’s Church had been corroded by individual commissions and bequests. These will now be corrected, and the work will return to the original vision of Achim von Esinbach, whose plans Kaibach has retrieved and adapted to the contemporary style: equally ornate, but less emblematic, more lifelike, more taken from Nature.

  Soon work on the new Narthex, Towers and Western Façade will begin. I had hoped to live to lay the Foundation Stone. It seems I have hoped in vain.

  One by one, my senses have been taken from me: Sight, Hearing . . . and now Touch. I can barely sense my surroundings, barely move on this my deathbed. All I can feel is pain, a dull ache pressing against my chest, conspiring to rob from me my final breath. And then, at times, at junctures increasingly frequent, an Agony.

  But I am glad of the silence, if not of the pain that is its ghostly companion. A Ruler’s ears are always filled with envious, slanderous poison, with jibes, slights and complaints. At most I have suffered for my promotion of my secretary, Emmerich Schäffer, to Regent in my infirmity. Noble and priestly tongues ceaselessly hissed in my ears that I had given him too much power, but in all conscience, I cannot fault what he has done for this City.

  For instance, it is a small matter, but one I truly appreciate, that there is now, thanks to Emmerich Schäffer, in the town hall of Hagenburg, a stone that weighs exactly a pound, a beaker that holds exactly one pint of water, a stick the exact length of one ell, and it is the task of one official, the Master of Measures, to make all weights and measures used in the city conform to these standards.

  The Whisperers warned me that Emmerich Schäffer is a schemer, hungry for power, but is this Statute for the Unification of Municipal Measurements the act of some aspirant despot?

  Is it then the act of a virtuous man, a Good Deed offered to the Judgement of God in hope of the remission of Sins?

  No, it is not that, either. And if the impetus behind his work is not the thirst for power, nor the theological virtue of Charity, then it must be something else, something unfamiliar to me and to members of my noble breed. What brave Knight would debase himself to calibrate a stick? What virtuous Saint would strive to regulate the dispensation of tavern wine in perfect pints and gills?

  And yet Schäffer and his kind set about this work with Industry, and it is by these small innovations, by these tiny yet significant increments, that civic life is ameliorated. And it is because of the work that Schäffer and I have done together that I know that, when I die, I will leave Hagenburg a better place.

  † † †

  No, I have not loved this Life, this World. For good reason it is known as a Vale of Tears. And yet I have not spent my life in weeping, but rather in vexation that the world is full of Fools.

  I know it is unspeakable Vanity, but if all the world were as me, if Hagenburg were full of von Zaberns and Schäffers, then we might, with industry and application, create a shadow of the Earthly Paradise here on the banks of the Rhine. And yet instead we struggle against a tide of Idiots, who through arrogance, greed, folly or lassitude, stand in the way of betterment and the common good.

  Why then, if that is so, do I so cling on to the gunwales of this Ship of Fools? Why do I not let myself slip into the oblivious waters?

  Because, even if my corrupt body is rotten and wracked with pain, even if all my senses have departed from me, leaving only agony and decay, my Mind is still blessed with Life. And, as in the long nights of my Youth, when I could find no sleep, I lie here . . . and think of Numbers.

  For Numbers are the bridge between the World of Perfection and this fallen, foolish vale of tears. They exist both in the purity of abstraction, and in the concrete, solid, sinful world. They exist in the ten fingers of my twitching, clutching hands, in the spidery numeric scrawls in Schäffer’s books of accounts, they exist in that vision of perfection in this fallen world, the Cathedral, in its circles, in its triangles, in the parabolae of its curls and curves, a beauteous image of the Godhead as a finite, geometrical and comprehensible idea. And they exist also in pure conception,
in the flights of numerical beauty that my mind conceives.

  Can one set a limit on numbers? Can one imagine where the line could be drawn and say . . . after this count, one may reckon no further?

  No. They have no beginning and have no end. Numbers stretch out, beyond our human limits, beyond our comprehension, to a boundless Infinity. This physical world, my body, my life, will come to an end, but numbers count onwards for ever, towards the greatest of all reckonings that can never, ever be reached.

  † † †

  I feel the touch of some caring being who kisses my hand, and pours some drops of water into my dry, gasping mouth. Is this Hieronymus? My old, faithful friend?

  I can feel the drops of water, one by one.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  In the crypt of the Cathedral, a tomb awaits me. My body shall be laid to rest, wrapped in a pure, white alb. My crozier shall be laid in my lifeless hands. Masses will be sung in my name. They will anoint my forehead with Holy Oil, and then, when all the rites of death are done, the Masons will heave and seal the heavy stone lid above my mortal remains.

  † EUGENIUS VON ZABERN

  (1201–1273)

  END OF BOOK THREE

  † Emmerich von Lenzenbach

  né Schäffer

  1215–1279

   Yudl ben Yitzak Rosheimer

  4992, Hagenburg—5046, Kalisz

  EPILOGUE:

  ECHOES

  (1350­–1351)