Devil's Lair

by David Wisehart

  The chapel smelled of incense and candles. Stepping inside, Giovanni felt as if he were entering pages of scripture: the long walls on either side were covered with paintings like an illuminated manuscript. The chapel ceiling was deep blue with a field of golden stars.

  “Giotto?” he asked, admiring the frescoes.

  Petrarch seemed impressed. “You know your artists.”

  “I knew him well enough in Naples, when he worked for King Robert.”

  “Did you and I ever meet in court?”

  “You had left before I arrived.”

  “King Robert,” Petrarch said wistfully. “I do miss the man.”

  Giovanni studied an allegorical painting of Envy: a man stood in flames, holding a bag of gold, with a snake coming out his mouth and biting his eyes.

  Petrarch said, “Enrico had this chapel built with the coin of his father’s shame.”

  Giovanni knew the Scrovegnis were usurers. Dante had seen Enrico’s father in Hell, with a bag of gold around his neck. “If one can buy a seat in Paradise, this would do it.”

  They proceeded to the crucifix and lit candles for the souls of their lost loves, Laura and Fiammetta.

  While Petrarch was at his prayers, Giovanni surveyed the rest of Giotto’s frescoes, which depicted the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The story began on the south wall with the Virgin’s parents, Joachim and Anna, showing their expulsion from the temple and their meeting at the Golden Gate. The upper panels of the northern wall envisioned scenes of Mary’s birth and marriage. On the chancel arch the Annunciation and Visitation were shown. Moving from to the south wall, Giovanni admired the Life of Christ: the Nativity, Sacrifice of the Innocents, Ministry, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost.

  He saw on the west wall, above the door and encompassing the high window, Giotto’s fresco of the Last Judgment. Jesus sat in the center, worshipped by choirs of angels and saints in Heaven. Below Him, on His right side, were the souls in Purgatory struggling to purge their sins. On His left, in a river of flame, flowed the souls of the damned. Blue demons prodded unrepentant sinners who tumbled down to where other shades were tortured: hung by their necks and hair and teeth and testicles; tied and impaled and burned and devoured; raped and pinched and flayed. One usurer was whipped as he loaned money to a woman being bit by serpent. The Devil sat on another serpent, squeezing sinners in each hand as he chewed one soul and defecated another.

  Staring at these horrors, Giovanni knew with a sense of foreboding that if he ever passed through the gates of Hell and survived to the seventh level, to the burning sands and the rain of fire, he would surely find his father.

  Petrarch led Marco into the Hall of Lances. The others followed. The knight saw ancient weapons and armor lining the hall on either side. The collection included more than two dozen lances mounted in a row.

  “I give you the Lance of Longinus,” Petrarch said.

  Marco studied the collection. “Which one is real?”

  “All of them. Or none. Relics are like loaves and fishes. They tend to multiply. Would you care to see my collection of Holy Grails?”

  “The true Grail is not in your collection,” Nadja said.

  Petrarch smiled. “Don’t tell Rienzo. He believes the odds are in his favor.”

  “We will take them all,” said Marco.

  “You will take one,” Petrarch answered.

  Marco stepped forward, confronting Petrarch with the full advantage of his height. He felt William’s hand on his arm.

  “No, Marco,” said the friar. Then, to Petrarch: “It is a generous offer. But we will choose.”

  Petrarch bowed. “Of course.”

  William said to Marco, “The honor is yours.”

  Marco examined the row of lances. “How do I chose?”

  “God will guide your hand,” said the friar. “If not, then we have no hope.”

  Marco moved down the row, studying each weapon.

  “Close your eyes,” William suggested.

  Marco closed his eyes. He brushed his fingertips across the shaft of each lance, hoping the right choice would make itself apparent, but he felt nothing. Frustrated, he let his hand drop and felt the edge of a table top. He had not noticed the table when he entered the hall, because he had been looking at the lances. Now he ran his hand over the cool, flat surface and discovered five objects there. Spearheads.

  “Ignore those,” Petrarch said. “Odds and ends, mostly.”

  Keeping his eyes closed, Marco touched each of the spearheads. One seemed warmer than the others. He picked it up, held it a moment in the palm of his hand, then closed his fingers around it. Something tingled in his spine, rising to the crown of his head. He felt a soft shudder flow through him. The darkness in his mind’s eye brightened with a scintillating blue light that pulsed and danced before him. It thrummed with a music just beyond hearing. The light was playful, a teasing sprite, until it formed into a thin diamond. It looked like the spearhead glowing in his hand, but when Marco opened his eyes the light was gone and the weapon proved to be nothing more than dull iron.

  “This one,” he said, before the certainty abandoned him.

  Petrarch took the spearhead from him, examined it briefly, then shrugged. “Very well, Aeneas.” He handed it back to Marco. “Let this be your golden bough.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Marco donned his new sabatons, his greaves, his cuishe, his breeches of mail; with Nadja’s help he put on his breast, his back, his vambrace, his gauntlet; he hung the old dagger on his right side and the new sword on his left. The Holy Lance, with its iron head now set on an ashwood shaft, he held in his fist. Marco hung his polished shield from the knob of a door and pondered his reflection. He liked what he saw. When he donned the helm, a voice from his dream still echoed inside.

  Remember.

  Nadja was not surprised when William declined Petrarch’s offer of new clothes. She and Giovanni accepted gratefully and retired to separate chambers to be fitted, with Nadja assisted by Marietta, a handmaid about her age, who arranged on the bed a half-dozen gowns of satin and samite and even spun cotton.

  Nadja selected a lavender cioppa of silk brocade, pleated from the neckline, and held the dress up to the to morning light. “They’re all so beautiful.”

  “My master says to choose the one you like.”

  “He’s much too generous. I thought he meant a new kirtle.”

  “I might fetch one for you, Miss.”

  “Whose clothes are these?”

  “Lady Isabella.”

  “Do you think she’d mind if I tried one on?”

  Marietta went quiet.

  “No, you’re right,” said Nadja. “It’s not my—”

  “Sorry, Miss.” The servant girl did not meet Nadja’s gaze. “Died of the buboes, she did, these three months past.”

  Nadja nearly dropped the dress.

  Plague clothes.

  “Oh no, Miss. We burned her sick clothes. She had no use for fine fittings then, in the last days, excepting the dress she was buried in. Oh, that was the finest, with a veil of course, so you could see how she was in good times.”

  “How was she?”

  “A fighter, Miss. A strong one, our Lady Isabella. She screamed day and night for nearly a week.”

  “How horrible.”

  “I didn’t mind so much. The worse was what came after.”

  “What?”

  “The quiet, Miss. That awful quiet.”

  Their provisions were restocked and four horses fetched: roan palfreys for William, Giovanni, and Nadja; a destrier for Marco. The destrier was pale grey and took to the name “Ash.” Strong and well-bred, Ash bore Marco through the field behind the Reggia, cantering for several stadia without tiring beneath the weight of knight and armor. Exhilarated, Marco returned to the lych gate where the others were gathered. One of the horses remained unburdened. William stood beside it, holding the reins and stroking its neck.

  “Time to mount up, Father
,” Marco said.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Too late for that.”

  From his own saddle Giovanni said, “If the Rule of Saint Francis forbids you a horse, why not ride Apuleius?”

  “I’d rather walk,” the friar insisted.

  “Even Christ rode upon an ass. Are you more pious than our Savior? Or is it pride?”

  That argument worked. The fourth horse became a sumpter. William rode the donkey. They kept to the main roads, skirting the Adriatic Sea before cutting inland toward Sulmona. Within a week they reached the base of Mount Maiella.

  They walked their animals up the steep mountain trail, past thickets of dry ginestra. Halfway to the summit they found an abandoned shepherd’s hut, a round little hovel of piled stone, where they rested and lit an open campfire to warn the eremites of their approach.

  When William finished his morning prayers he saw Giovanni watching him from the fireside, sitting where he had slept only moments before. The poet’s eyes were watery from the day’s first light. His hair was a tangle, his expression curious.

  “Are your prayers ever answered?” Giovanni asked in that somber voice he reserved for the mornings.

  “I’m not sure,” William admitted. He poked at the embers with a stick and fed them a handful of leaves. Bright flamelets arose to consume the offering.

  Giovanni stared down the mountainside to the valley below. “Do you believe God is all-powerful?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all-knowing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And perfectly good?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what use is prayer?”

  William smiled. The question reminded him of his student days at Oxford. “I understand your dilemma.”

  “If I pray for it to rain tomorrow,” Giovanni continued, “am I influencing God?”

  “You tell me.” William wiped his hands together to remove the last of the leaves.

  Giovanni said, “God already knows if it will rain or not.”

  “He knows both.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why limit God to what will happen?”

  “God must know the future.”

  “Only one?”

  “Can there be more?”

  “If God knows everything,” said William, “then He knows all possible futures. He knows it will rain tomorrow. He knows that it will not.”

  “But He is more than the Knower. He is the Cause.”

  “Yes.”

  Giovanni scratched his right ear, as if to dislodge some phrase that had fallen inside. “If the rain is good, and if God is good, and if He is all-powerful, then God will make it rain.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why limit God’s actions to what is good? This is foolishness. This is wrong.”

  “Wrong because there is evil in the world?”

  “God does not make the rain because it is good. The rain is good because God makes it.”

  “Then the drought is good because God makes it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And pestilence, too, is good.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Devil himself.”

  William laughed. “How can it be otherwise?”

  “You make an excellent heretic, Father.”

  “For believing God omnipotent? No, Giovanni. The heresy is to believe that man has any power over God. God obeys His own will, not ours. We cannot force His hand.”

  “But we have free will.”

  “In some things, yes. We can choose to love or hate.”

  “A righteous man should go to Heaven.”

  “But will he? You cannot tie the hands of God. You cannot obligate Him with your actions. God can send an evil man to Heaven or a good man to Hell.”

  “I must have skipped that verse.”

  “King David committed adultery and murder, yet he was beloved of God.”

  Giovanni mulled this over. “Dante saw David in Paradise, and several popes in Hell.”

  “I might nominate several more.”

  “But the pope has Peter’s keys.”

  “God cannot be bound by any pope or priest or pilgrimage. Nor by your prayers, Giovanni. Whether you pray for rain or not is of no consequence to God.”

  “And yet, Father, you are constantly at prayer.”

  William nodded. “‘per omnem orationem et obsecrationem orantes omni tempore.’”

  “Argumentum ad verecundiam,” Giovanni remarked. “A logical fallacy.”

  “Is God’s authority false? Are the scriptures false?”

  “I thought you were a man of logic.”

  “And a man of God.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “Are they?”

  The wind shifted, blowing smoke in Giovanni’s face. He leaned back and covered his eyes. When he opened them again they gleamed with the spark of a new argument. “Aquinas says God cannot create a self-contradiction.”

  “Aquinas was a brilliant fool,” said William. “He knew Aristotle better than he knew God. Aquinas could not conceive of a paradoxical Creator. Can God create a stone so heavy He cannot lift it? Can He make a promise so binding He cannot break it? When God grants a revelation, must it come to pass? If the Bible is the word of God, is He bound by it? Can an all-powerful God bind Himself? The mind reels and falls back on faith. If God is omnipotent, then no laws can bind Him—neither the laws of nature nor the laws of logic. This was Aquinas’s great mistake, conflating logic with theology.”

  “So prayer is, by your own reasoning, unreasonable.”

  “It has no place on the path of reason.”

  “Then why do you pray?”

  “It is the path of love.”

  The hermitages were small cells cut into the mountainside, honeycombing the cliff and overlooking the ravine. Nadja entered one of the cells and found it empty and unadorned, except for a stone pillow. A man might sit or lie down if he bent his legs, but even Nadja could not stand up straight inside. Stepping out, she saw an old hermit treading down the trail. The man wore sackcloth and carried a stick. When he was still some ways off, he raised a hand in greeting.

  She heard William mutter to Giovanni, “Fraticello.”

  Marco called out, “Hello there!”

  “Keep your voice low,” William said.

  The Fraticello arrived moments later. “God’s blessings upon you, my friends.”

  William answered for the group. “And you, brother.”

  He asked directions to the monastery of Santo Spirito, and the man said it was just beyond the ridge.

  “I am Brother Sebastian,” he added.

  “William of Ockham.”

  The man’s eyes lit up. “William of Ockham? Author of the Summa logicae?”

  William nodded.

  “And the Opus nonaginta dierum?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And Dialogus de potestate Papae et Imperatoris?”

  “I commend you on your library.”

  “I heard you were dead.”

  William shrugged. “I had not heard that.”

  He introduced the others.

  Giovanni said, “We’re looking for Cola di Rienzo.”

  “I know the name,” said Brother Sebastian.

  “Is he here?”

  “That I cannot tell you. We do not trade much in names here. The hermits keep to themselves, as you might imagine, and we respect their privacy.”

  “Might we ask around?” said William.

  “You are free to roam the mountain, but the monastery has rules. You understand.”

  “We mean no trouble.”

  “Let me consult the abbot. If Rienzo is on the mountain, he will know of it.”

  Brother Sebastian invited them to Santo Spirito, but told them to leave behind their mounts and possessions.

  Marco refused. “I will not go unarmed.”

  “My friend is wo
unded and a bit too wary,” William told the Fraticello. “Let him keep his walking stick.”

  Brother Sebastian stared at the Holy Lance. “That’s no walking stick.”

  “It is many things. If my friend may carry his stick, I will vouch for his good behavior.”

  “No weapons in the monastery. If he will not come without it, then he is not welcome here.”

  “Then neither am I,” William said. “You may tell your abbot how you turned me out.”

  He led his companions back down the trail. They had not gone five steps before Brother Sebastian said, “Please. Brother William. Forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “I have been rude. Let me take this up with the abbot. Perhaps we can come to some arrangement.”

  At nightfall he returned with a proposal: “The knight may bring his lance, but no other weapons, and no armor. The girl must hide her sex and promise to remain silent.” He held a hooded robe for her to wear. She consented.

  “Follow me,” said the Fraticello. He crossed himself. “Iesus Christi custodiat animam meam.”

  The abbey of Santo Spirito was built in the hollow of a rocky spur that beetled the valley. What had once been a church was now a collection of small rooms run by the Celestines after the example of Pietro di Morrone, the hermit who became a pope against his will and later abdicated, only to be imprisoned and killed by his successor.

  These new hermits, too, had no love for the world beyond the mountain. Brother Sebastian and two others sat with William and Giovanni around the fireplace, beneath a fresco of Pope Celestine.

  “We know little of this pestilence,” said Brother Sebastian. “The news we get is unreliable. We heard you were dead, Brother William, yet here you are.”

  “Not for long,” William said. “You should come with us.”

  Brother Elias frowned. “Leave the mountain?”

  “For a holy cause.”

  “There is evil enough in the world,” said Brother Leo, “without stirring up more.”

  “Evil has stirred,” William said.

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “Then join us. Help us. Think of it—an army of holy men to harrow Hell. What a glory that would be!”

  Brother Leo folded his hands. “There is glory in prayer, Brother William. Perhaps you should join us. Stay here. Teach the others. You have the wisdom of many years. If the world outside is as bad as you say, we must redouble our commitments and remain vigilant in our duties—not abandon our watch when God needs us most.”