The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

"You're good to me," he murmured, and drifted again to sleep. Later he said, "I'm hungry." Later again, he said, "Hunger gnaws at me. There's a snake in my guts. Kind holy lady, please tell them I must have something to eat."

  "Not yet," she said. She gave him more water.

  He trusted her, drank, and fainted again into sleep.

  He was very weak and would die without sustenance. What should it be? Milk, with a little bread crumbled in it, a light meaty broth. She mashed apples to a pulp with water heated at the kitchen hearth, and added a sip of the ale. This mush she fed him, but it only made him nauseous, and brought no strength.

  "Who else is here?" he said. "Sister, send some boy to the market. He's sure to go. Give him - 'here he fumbled for coins, and found nothing."Well, only tell him Pierre asked it." He smiled charmingly.

  "Rest," she said. Til do what I can." For he had obviously forgotten a great amount, and it was not the time to tell him they were walled up inside a house.

  Almost all the smoke seemed to have cleared from the City, but a heavy rain had begun, and sometimes thunder shook the timbers of the building. The street, peered at through the tiny window-place, looked deserted, though once she saw another cart go past below, lugged by a weary man, mounds in it under a covering, and making east. The mason's house had no upper east window. She could not see if the pall of the crematory fires still flooded upward there.

  Jhane set about searching the house again. It was true that she discovered items she had not found on her prior foray. In a pocket of the chimney of the great hooded fireplace in the mason's bedchamber, was a cache of coins. In a cupboard she came on the tools of builders, a saw and tongs, pick-axe and hoe. In a box beneath rested the mason's level, and some wooden shapes whose purpose eluded her. She unearthed some wine also which, as with the cloves of garlic, was a useful disinfectant: the training of the nunnery. She found, too, parchments with architectural drawings, and three books she could not read, ink-horn and quills, a child's cradle with a cloth doll lying in it, at which she recalled the mason's words of the stillbirths, and the bones of a dead rat. None of these was of any help to her.

  Days and nights washed over the house. Each was its own season, a little year.

  Pierre, who had begun to seem stronger, now lapsed. He said, "There's a hard stone under the pillow."

  "Not a stone. It's your own cross."

  "I haven't any," he said.

  "Yes. When you were in the fever, I took it from your neck and placed it there for safe-keeping. Your cross with the topaz."

  He said, "My father gave it me." He said, "It came from the Holy Land. Just the jewel, the crucifix was made for it after. My father was on a great crossade. He killed Saracens. They reject the Christ - as you know, sister. They worship a man. And an angel also -Jabrael, God's Mighty One… Yes, the yellow stone, the topaz, he cut it from some breast-plate of a fallen pagan priest, in a shrine there, or so he said…" He faded and was senseless for a while. Then he woke and said, "But the cross was stolen from me. I remember that. I was beaten, and the cross - ' Wild with fear he stared at her, struggling not to remember.

  "A dream of the fever," she said. "It's over."

  Later in the night he said, "I had a sister. She told me lies about our father. How could she do that?"

  He had learnt nothing.

  "Sister

  She did, for a moment, start. But all nuns were the sisters of all men.

  "Lie quietly," she said.

  "Did I - make confession to you?"

  "Never. It was not necessary."

  "But now."

  "Nor necessary now."

  "I can't," he said. "I can't."

  "Live? Yes."

  "The little cross - '

  "Yes."

  "If I - don't live - take it. No, that's wrong. If I live, take it anyway. For your order, sister."

  Now she did not start at all.

  "She said, "Some gifts can't be given. Your father gave it you. It must stay with you."

  She thought he slept. Then he said, "Will you put the cross round my neck?"

  Jhane did as Pierre asked her. The chain, which had been thieved elsewhere, seemed to puzzle him briefly. Then he lay still, thinking of the feel of the cross, the jewel, on his skin.

  "That girl I told you about - did I? My sister, Jehanine. She was a harlot in the City. She came to me to show me her degradation, then she ran and hid herself. I saw what she'd become, just by looking in her eyes. I wish I hadn't seen that."

  Oh, he had learnt nothing. He must live, it was his only hope. Yet he was dying now.

  Jhane walked the house, up and down. She opened again the chests and cupboards, held a candle to the mouse holes, but even the mice were gone. She felt no hunger, she felt only beyond herself, a vast space hollow as a bell, in which she was; breathing, moving, alive, slenderly hard and sure as a needle. But Pierre was like the dust, like melting snow, like water. He must be remade. He must have food.

  In the watery dawn, some men went by. Jhane called down from a window. They took no notice of her. Perhaps her voice failed to reach them, deaf ears or hearts or minds.

  Through the dark, the City bells rang once more every one of the offices. At Laude, Jhane went down through the house, to the kitchen. By the glimmer of the candle, she looked into the empty larder.

  As her hands were searching over the bare surfaces, she thought very clearly and suddenly of the Angel Esrafel, companion-captain of the Prince of Light. Standing quite still, arms on the shelf, her head thrown back, she closed her eyes, recapturing as it seemed entirely the ecstasy and healing of his embrace.

  Then she opened her eyes and gazing before her, she saw what she had been looking for: food. At the revelation of the sight, she was grasped by utter terror. For an instant she rejected the absolute truth, the miracle, as unthinkable. But in another instant, she felt again the touch of the angel. She accepted that the world was altered. She accepted her own power and strength. Terror left her immediately. There was only the hollow of the night enclosing her hard purity, which could not be shaken.

  Then, practical, she turned to seek out the means of preparation, and - the training of the nunnery - such methods as there were of care.

  "The boy came back from the market," said Jhane. She set the bowl on the floor. Propping Pierre half asleep on the pillows, she began to spoon the broth into his mouth. She was very weak. It had taken an endless time. It had taken years even to climb the stair, but maybe not so long, for the broth was still hot, fragrant with the grains of garlic, the dash of wine, the ripe clean smell of the fresh meat.

  At first, he was almost unable to take it. But after he had had some, and slept a while, he took more. There was enough of the food for some days.

  At the hearth fire, she kept the cauldron heated, and also burned the stained and ruined linen. The wine and apples fortified her now. When she lost consciousness it was never for very long. She had fainted repeatedly in the beginning, kneeling by her cooking.

  Some dream told her she had committed a sin, heeding the angel, but she laughed aloud at it. She was full of joy. She would not bother with the rest.

  She knew also that miracles attended upon miracles, and that, before Pierre had consumed all the broth, some means of escape would come to them.

  One morning, a colossal thunder-clap shook the whole house. It was a group of mailed men banging on the plaster of the lower house with axes and mallets.

  Jhane looked down at them dreamily from a window.

  "Sister! How are you faring? Are there any more with you? Any still sick with the pest?"

  "One man with me. Neither sick now, but starving."

  "You were heard calling, but they said it was a ghost. / said, that's the gentle nun went in there, to help the mason. And God will have spared her."

  He was the soldier who had sneered at her when she had done so. Now his face was bright and young with happiness.

  "The plague's over. It's gone. Old Death's taken himse
lf off."

  A chunk of plaster gave way and fell with a crash. The men cheered and hullooed, waving their mallets up at her in salute.

  "The young man with me is very feeble," said Jhane. "Please will some of you come in and carry him down."

  She left the window and went to Pierre to tell him, but he had heard, of course.

  He was handsome today, his looks returning like the spring. Under his tunic, hastily pulled on for the outing, the topaz glinted. He did not know her, but he said, "Sister, my own kindred couldn't have been more tender to me. You saved my life, perhaps my soul. Do you know, I was apprenticed to an artisan. But I heard he died. Well, I'll find one to take me on. God gave me a talent. I must use it, to God's glory."

  Then, when a doorway was smashed, and the men came tramping up the stairs, he said, "You have a look of my own sisters, isn't that strange?"

  But his eyes were still dimmed over.

  It was two of the soldiers, not Pierre, who noticed her own plight.

  "Ssh," she cautioned, as another of the men bore Pierre away. "Tell him nothing. Don't mention it when he's by."

  "But in God's name, how did this happen?"

  Used perhaps to the wounds of war, the two soldiers stayed by her, and renewed the wrappings and bindings. As if seeing the rough staunching by fire, however, for the first, and the protruding sawn bone, so very white, Jhane herself turned ill. When she recovered, she was in the street in the arms of the soldier who had sneered, and now held her like his child. A mild rain kissed her face. "Ssh," she said again.

  "How - ' he said. "This sacrifice - did,you? How - '

  "The Lord guided me and gave me strength."

  Of such matters legends were made.

  They took her to another house of nuns, much depleted since the Death, whose inhabitants cared for her in costive silence. The surgeon, a man who had fled the City, returned and did not credit the tale. This woman had been attacked by criminals in the hysteria and panic of the pest. Confronting Jhane with his verdict, he was pleased by her acquiescence. He prophesied that the upper portion of the limb might grow infected, in which case the work would be to do again, the cut higher, and she might die. He did not fear this death, nor warning her lavishly of it, for it was not in itself contagious.

  She heard no more of Pierre, who had gone away with his golden head lying on the newest rescuer's shoulder. She did not give a thought to paintings and carvings which perhaps, by his skill, might come to adorn the churches of Paradys. Or to the love he would effortlessly win, or the jewel Belnard had given him.

  Part of her own self had become a part of him, yet even this reverie did not prevail upon her. Recollecting her act, the use of the tools found in the house, the tight-binding and cauterisation, the subsequent preparation of the meat - into which had intruded a ghostly figment of Osanne, (whose own disintegrated arm had been raised from the well) - then Jhane herself doubted that she could have performed the deed. She did not at all regret it.

  A pain-wrought phantom arm and hand, to the very fingers, remained to her below the elbow. Their presence was so decided that often she would reach out with them, finding with surprise she could not then take hold of things in this way. The phantom was, she knew, the incorporeal arm of her spirit. Unlike flesh, it could not be severed from her.

  When she left the nun's hospital they were greatly relieved, for the proximity of a martyr and saint had oppressed them.

  Jhane herself was unencumbered. She was already putting from her mind the image of her brother. She did not feel holy. No more than she hugged to herself the mad terror of her crimes did she clasp the greater terror and madness of her act in the mason's house. She did not believe she had been valorous, extraordinary, tested, or kind.

  The unlocked doors of the nunnery gate had saved them from being forced, for at some time persons had entered. They were gone now, and there had been no desecration, only a certain amount of human dirt left lying. Nor were there any corpses. Jhane set herself, slowly, to clean the yards.

  The milk had turned to curds in the refectory-kitchen, and these she ate, along with such fruit and salt fish as the invaders of the nunnery had not devoured. The water in the refectory well was crystalline.

  As she ragged and broomed, the flight of a sudden bird among the empty cloisters, or the flutter of stray sunshine, might cause Jhane to glance about her. But the ghosts did not return.

  She would have rung the bell in the tower, but, lacking an arm, it was inconceivable she would be able to do it. She regretted this, the gap where its notes should have sounded oddly disturbed her. She missed also the chanting of the nuns, and sometimes thought she did hear it, but the susurrus was in her own head.

  At first she went to the church solely to see what had been done there, and if the great window was broken, but only a little debris had been blown in, and rain, which had formed and dried in pools in the uneven floor. The window was intact. So, on days when the sun shone, and at dawn, Thane would go to look at the picture, at the Angel Lucefiel, Son of Morning and Bringer of Light, sword drawn and still falling eternally through the sky, the solar halo behind his head, on wings of fire, one foot against a gilded orb. Perhaps it was the daylight which blazed through this image that gave it such reason for her. It was the only artistic form she had ever understood, and the only iconic thing, apart from her doll in childhood, she had ever found plausible.

  At night, or when exhausted, Jhane went to her former sleeping place in the cell, in the wooden hostel, and lay down there.

  Sometimes she dreamed, on the pallet, that new nuns had filled the stone desert and were at the offices, or hoeing the south garden, while the novices learned from painted books in the House of the Novitiate. It seemed to her this might come to be, and that they would accept her, although she had not been made a Bride, and that it would be very simple to live in this way for a life of years, knowing everything by rote, and beyond the rote, wedded to the certainty of the fact.

  Then again, she dreamed that the Nunnery of the Angel had been for centuries a ruin, or that it did not exist, that she had imagined or conjured it. Or that, even though the walls and courts were present, the order had not worshipped Lucefiel, the Christ, but some other.

  None of this concerned Jhane. Her dreams were not fears or even questionings. Merely rehearsals of different chance.

  She did not attempt - she never had attempted - to count the days. Spring came blustering through the nunnery, and lit the columns and the garden with yellow and white flowers.

  As she crossed the south cloister, Jhane saw that the stone child by the fountain had become a dwarf, who got to his feet and bowed and capered, revealing the stone child was there after all, behind him.

  "Buy a ribbon," said the dwarf. "Or have you cut your hair and shaved your quaint skull?"

  "I have not," said Jhane. "But neither do you have your tray of ribbons."

  "True. When you saw me last I was a king. When I saw you last, you were a boy. What are you, female or male? Or both - some abomination."

  But Jhane moved on towards the church. The dwarf went with her, and entered as she did through the side door into the nave.

  It was almost the hour of Tiers, and the sun filled the Great Light.

  They regarded it, the nun and the dwarf.

  When Jhane sank to her knees, the dwarf was taller than she. He seemed to be considering this. Then he walked forward, between Jhane and the window. And he began to stand up in his skin.

  He became Belnard her step-father, he became the apothecary of her journey, and then he became - spreading and billowing - the fat woman with the keys - and then stretching thin and bearded, he was Master Motius, and, getting fleshy and smooth again, the mason, and losing the flesh, Conrad the thief, and folding inwards and out, in a quick succession, pious Osanne, the Mother, the young nun Marie-Lis. And then, he was Jhane herself.

  There she stood, clad as she had been in the bounty of the nunnery, in that plain gown, but her hair was lo
ose and savage about her, her eyes gleaming.

  "It's very clever," said the real Jhane, still kneeling. "How do you do it?"

  "Ah," said the dwarf-Jhane. "That's telling, that is."

  And then he rose up and opened into fire and wings and was an angel, all golden, who extended his hand to her, while through the translucence of his garments she saw his heart burning like a wounded golden rose.

  Jhane sighed.

  "Was it always you?"

  "Perhaps," he said, "or not." But she barely heard his words through the music of his voice. Leave yourself, said the music. You may come back to her.

  And Jhane left herself, kneeling there on the floor of the church. She lifted with the angel into the sky. She was an angel herself. She was not indeed, herself. There was no gender, neither female nor male. Jhane was a winged creature of the light. Above her the sun, below, the earth, which was a round orb, shining.

  They flew freely, the two angels. They embraced and sang and communed without speech and touched all things and glorified all things, and were.

  Jhane will die?

  Yes, although not yet.

  And the world? Will the world end?

  One day the world will end.

  When will it end? Surely sin will not destroy it?

  Sin will not destroy the world. While the world has sin it cannot end. Not until the world is perfect may the world end. The world is for a purpose. But when the world is perfect and whole, and all things therein, and all mankind, perfect and whole, then the world will be permitted its finish. There will be a great shining, as in the window you see it, the coming of a great light, like fire. And in that time, the world will end, and all life find its liberty.

  Life is the dream, said the angel who had been Thane.

  So be it, said the Angel Esrafel. But let it be a sweet dream, at least.

  Then Jhane opened her eyes in the church, cramped and chilled, alone, and night was falling in the window.

  She could not read or write, and so she could not set down her vision of the apocalypse. It is often the way. This she understood, and that it did not matter in any case.

  Rising, she went quietly to the refectory, lit a candle, and ate curds and drank water behind her wooden screen.