John the Pupil

by David Flusfeder

  And covered by darkness, the solitary tolling of a bell, and a new sound rose to our ears, a slow heavy clinking, engine of hell. But this is wrongly told, I am leaping ahead of my story, how may I switch from day to night, it was still daylight, our interrogation proceeded, we were powerless except for the infinite mercy of God.

  Cupidity and avarice overcame their superstition and supposition, and they decided after all that we were criminals carrying a great treasure. When we were hungry they did not feed us, when we were thirsty they did not give us water, instead they spat at us some of the beer they were drinking, and then sat together away from us as if they were frightened they had gone too far and maybe we were demons after all, the Pope’s Friars, who might enact a terrible revenge.

  Then came the sound of him, and he arrived in the torchlight, our old enemy, the malevolent Simeon the Palmer. After that, even at this remove, I have difficulty in remembering the events in the order that they occurred. Simeon was wary of us, but he knew what he desired. And I understand now that it was in that first moment of our meeting, when he saw my hand go to the scrip in which I carry my Master’s Great Work, that he had decided what he would steal from us.

  That was not all they took. They took the apparatus to demonstrate to the Pope, and they threw aside the rest of our things, the bundle of rags that my Master had given me for when we had lost all hope, and the treasures that I had gathered and which they did not have the eyes to see, and the writings I have made, because they have no interest in them. And they drove us out of their village and we sat on a hillside by a stream and Brother Bernard, like a beast, knelt on all fours and drank from the stream to try to wash away the foul taste of the rags, and this was the time of the greatest sorrow.

  Which we made worse, by chiding one another. We had failed and I was unable to consider any course of action, because I was thinking about our return and my Master’s face when I would tell him of our failure, all his great hopes gone.

  My companions told me that I should open the package that my Master gave me. This was even though they had lost all respect for my powers and my leadership and, by extension, my Master’s authority and wisdom were becoming null. But in time of no hope, fleeting comfort may be found in even the slightest possibility of a change of state. The sky was dark, a sliver of moon above us, the North Star, and I ripped the cloth with Brother Bernard’s knife.

  I do not know what I was expecting. My fingertips recognised it instantly, but my understanding tarried behind. I had to hold it, open it, feel the fall of the pages, some few of which have been inscribed by me. I told them,

  It is my Master’s Book.

  Both my companions asked what then was in the box that the Palmer had stolen. I think some of my authority was already returning, but I did not give an answer because it was at that moment that the night was torn apart. A crack of thunder as loud as the trumpets at Jericho sounded, followed by screams of fear, the noises of consternation and confusion, villagers running below as if the Devil himself were riding them.

  I returned to the empty village with my reluctant companions and saw there the wreckage of the shining box that the Palmer had stolen and the smell of sulphur from the firecracker that my providential Master had placed beneath its lid.

  We gathered what was left of our possessions and returned to the road, walking by starlight, and when my companions asked why they were chosen for this journey, I answered that I had chosen them, because they were the two members of our Order that I loved the best.

  And this is what happened on this day, Saint Silverius’s Day, the twentieth day of June in the year of Our Lord 1267.

  • • •

  Saint Bartholomew’s Day

  Bartholomew the apostle went to India, which is at the end of the earth. He entered a temple wherein there was an idol named Astaroth, in whom dwelled a demon who claimed that he healed the sick. In truth he did not cure them but merely stopped hurting them.

  Brother Bernard is suffering. When his bowels emptied again, he cried aloud. He slunk away from the fire and we heard the sound again, like a sudden burst of rain. Throughout the night we had been often woken by the mournful repetition of Bernard stumbling from his sleeping place to the trees and whining as his bowels washed open. In between these dismal occurrences he rolled on the ground and spoke out loud in waking sleep,

  Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in distress. I am like a dead man.

  I said, to comfort him,

  Stand firm and you will be saved.

  He was not to be comforted. In his anguish, his tongue found a new nimbleness,

  Tears and affliction have washed my eyes, my throat, my belly. Demons have broken my strength.

  I had the means to assuage his torment but not at first the will. I have saved some of the treasures I have collected but these were intended for the studies of my Master, not the soothing of my companion’s pain. But then, for love of Brother Bernard, and pity for his suffering, I instructed Andrew to fetch water from the stream, which we boiled inside a pot on the fire. I tore blackberry root and chamomile leaves and ground them to a paste which I poured into the pot and brought Bernard towards it.

  I have seen something great, he said. It was like the window we saw.

  Breathe in the vapour, I said to him.

  It was like the window but not of glass, it was an enormous wheel the size of a village, divided into chambers, and it was rolling before me on the crest of a hill.

  Move your head, I said.

  I thrust his face closer to the water but he kept speaking.

  It was built of wood, and each of the chambers contained an inhabitant, a prisoner, and the one that I was looking at, that had fixed my attention, that compelled it, was in the top corner, between a man who was laughing and another who was crying.

  While the water is still hot, I said.

  And the chamber was empty. It was the only one that was empty in the whole structure. The chamber was empty and it was meant for me.

  I thrust his face close to the pot of water, instructed him to breathe slowly and deeply. He tried to speak, he coughed, I moved his head closer to the curative vapour.

  His breathing subsided, he quietened, he breathed.

  In my guilt at not immediately helping my companion, the remedy I made for him was too strong. For, as my Master has written, in whatsoever thing the most High God has put an admirable virtue, He has also placed a hurt, to be as it were the guard of the thing itself.

  And maybe the ingredients had not been well judged, and maybe the powder had not been finely enough ground, for, instead of assuaging Brother Bernard’s torment, my medicine increased it. The fever took him to a place beyond words to describe it. The poison and its remedy fought against each other on the battleground of his body. We watched over our companion for the rest of the night and most of the following day. I assured Brother Andrew that our friend would not die.

  • • •

  In the rain we walk, newly baptised, the sorrow and tears of the sinner, contemplating Christ’s sacrifice and our own unworthiness.

  Sedulius wrote,

  To go to Rome, much labour, little profit. The King whom you desire, if you do not bring Him with you, you will not find.

  Come quickly, Lord, cut into the various secret hidden passions, open the wound quickly lest the noxious humour spread, cleanse all that is fetid with a pilgrim bath.

  • • •

  We walk because we always walk. We sleep because we sometime sleep. We pray, because God loves us.

  It was one of those occasions when we could not bear to go on, when one of us, weaker or more sincere, spoke for the rest. Andrew sank to the earth, found a hollow beneath a tree. He said,

  We can stay here, we can preach to the birds and the wolves, like Francis.

  He pulled a low branch over himself, as cover.

  Delightful as it might be to sink into the warm earth, we had to go on. And I had to blandish my companions to do so.


  Andrew said,

  We can fish in the river. It is good here.

  We walk in Our Lord’s footsteps. If He stumbles and falls under His load, if He seeks comfort from the basest thief, then His lowly followers, and unworthy believers, can hardly do less. Each step of His was agony. He borrowed from us the capacities for pain and death; in return He gave us eternal life.

  But, we rested. Brother Andrew was tired. Brother Bernard has still not regained his former strength. We lay on the soft earth and looked up to the clouds.

  That is like a long-shanked man lying on his side, I said.

  Rather, it is a dragon, puffing smoke, and see how it changes, become a valley in the hillside.

  Brother Bernard’s imagination is inflamed from his sickness.

  Brother Andrew sees only clouds. Most marvellous, he says.

  And now she is a woman on her back, and there is a fire beside her and the smoke is a forest of trees.

  We watch and listen in a kind of wonder, as our companion, like a far traveller, reports back from the worlds he witnesses. These are more true to him than the one that holds us, that stains his lips with the sap from the grass he chews on. Or maybe it is not his sickness that operates his fancy; Brother Bernard’s eyes are clear, his brow is free from sweat. My medicine has finally worked, despite its penalty and pain. He lies on his back and without labour of thought the shapes in the sky are named, described, reconfigured.

  We have to be careful. The legend, of the Pope’s Friars or the Pope’s Magicians, travels much faster than we do.

  • • •

  Saint John the Baptist’s Day

  By the zeal of his preaching and the meritorious example of his life, the holy forerunner of Our Lord converted many. The prudent good judgement that Saint John the Baptist brought to his preaching came out in three ways. First, he used threats to put fear in the perverse, saying, Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree, every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Second, he used promises to entice the good, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Third, he used moderation, attracting the sinful towards perfection little by little, imposing light obligations to carry them forward to greater things – the people at large to do works of mercy, the tax collectors to abstain from hungering for what belonged to others, the soldiers not to rob anyone or accuse anyone falsely, and to be satisfied with their wages.

  Lighted torches are carried around the bonfire on his feast day, because the Baptist was a burning torch and a shining torch. A wheel is spun because around John’s birth the days become shorter, just as at Christ’s birthday the days become longer. As Saint John said, I must decrease but He must increase.

  The false book was bound in red leather with two ribs on the spine. I had thought that this signified the earth and heaven, the two natures of man, as well as reaching back to our originals, Adam and Eve, while suggesting too the book’s author and its intended reader, united together in a common purpose, yet necessarily apart. The false book was destroyed by the cupidity of demons and villagers, and the sulphur and saltpetre of my Master’s precautions.

  My Master does not reach towards analogical meaning. He observes, he reads, he demonstrates, he proves. His thought is never airy. But now, his Book dispatched, maybe now, alone in the room at the top of the friary, no scribe, no pupil, his friends all too far away, endeavours temporarily over, prayers said, night drawn close, maybe then he permits something of the fancy into his mind; his ferocity relaxes, that stern hold he has on the world, on himself, abates, maybe too he permits himself to receive unbidden images into his mind, phantoms of possibility, Popes and kings bow to him, a grateful world at last acknowledges his eminence in winding lines that stretch out from the word in red and azure. Maybe he even permits himself to feel some concern for his unworthy messenger and his labour.

  On the pages, inside the four packages that contain the seven parts of the Book, inscribed no less clearly than the words and numbers and the mathematical figures in the margins, are the sternness and authority of my Master. The copyist, when my Master’s attention was away from the work, gave space to his fancy, colouring in red the large initial letter to announce that a new subject is to be discussed, and then switching colours, using the knife to cut in new shapes, the threads of his fancy, winding towards the edges of the page in blue. Lines rounden, loop, droop, curve. I have looked for meaning here in the copyist’s shapes. After a while, one line becomes my Master’s face seen from the side, another a leaf dripping like water from a narrow branch. It is as when I was back in the friary with my map to the Holy Land, and my eyes lifted away from the journey to the celestial city to make shapes out of shadows.

  But I do not have my companion Brother Bernard’s capacity for transformations. And the simplest conclusion is usually the correct one. The two spines of the false book were a means of holding the explosive materials beneath the leather cover. And there is no meaning here, it is just shape without content. The author is unrelenting, the copyist complains and produces a series of blue ornamentations fevered by his weariness at producing those regular cramped letters. He was rushed in execution and made mistakes. I have corrected some of them but I doubt that I have caught them all, the Book is so large, so compendious, so many small words on so many pages.

  And perhaps Bernard’s designs are no different, his strange shapes inscribed on my pages, a compulsion to make something different. In Bernard’s secret drawings are the copies he makes of leaves and trees and animals we have seen on our way and even some men. And then something compels him to combine them, to match the body shape of one with the features of another, the trunk of a tree, a head of a boar, hair of leaves. A butterfly’s body has a bird’s beak and a lizard’s tail. Trees have antlers instead of branches. A bush blossoms wolf-heads for flowers. He is ashamed each occasion his drawings are discovered. You shall not make graven images. It is a blasphemy to rewrite God’s creation.

  • • •

  My companions interrogated me about the journey. They had been discussing it between themselves. They might even have been thinking of forsaking it. This journey has been a lie, Brother Bernard said. Why did you not trust us? Brother Andrew said. What is this Book that we are carrying? It must have great value if other people should desire it so much, Brother Bernard said. Not people, demons, Brother Andrew said. The Devil was in the priest as he was in Simeon the Palmer as he was in that master of your festivities in Paris.

  Bernard will not have that. His tongue was thick again, he had not the fluency to convey his passion or his heart, but he will not have us abuse the Crow whom he calls the Poet.

  And as we argued, as the night fell and settled around us, as I explained the importance of the mission, and again, as in my meditations in the friary, as with the copyist’s errant hand, my thoughts turned to the castle girl with whom Brother Andrew … I may not ask him, although I long to, as he, I know, wishes to be asked, so he may talk about her again, her beauty, their sin.

  Caesarius of Heisterbach teaches that,

  Demons are called tempters, because they are either the authors or provokers of all the temptations that draw me into sin. If the Devil tempted the first man in Paradise, if he presumed to tempt Christ in the desert, what man is there in the world that he will leave untempted? To every man there are assigned two angels, the good for protection, the evil for trial.

  The Lord your God tries you, that it may appear whether you love Him.

  • • •

  Saint Peter’s Day

  or it might be Saint Paul’s Day

  We have lost our way again, so we navigate by churches. We stay away from villages because of what happened to Brother Andrew.

  The head of the church lies to the east. The north is cold and dark. The south is where the sunshine pours in. We are heading south. We beat our way through branches and thorns, church to church, bell by bell.

  Outside farmyards geese chase us.

 
Brother Bernard has learnt gentleness. It might be the example of Brother Andrew, or even my own, or it might be the effect of his fever, but he no longer exhibits that bellicosity of former times; he reflects Our Lord’s gentleness and this is to the profit of his soul but all the same it makes me more timid on our road without the promise of his strength to protect us.

  In the maps I used to follow there were castles and rivers and shrines and nothing in between. Life on this part of the journey is the other way around. It is in the nullity that the mapmaker could not imagine that the true things are to be found. And where we are, our small progress, the worms and seeds of food that sustain us, like Church fathers in the wilderness, preaching to the insects and the stars.

  As it is written, With labour and toil shall you eat thereof all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall bring it forth to you; and you shall eat the herbs of the earth.

  Ahead of us are the mountains.

  • • •

  Saint Swithin’s Day

  Saint Swithin directed full well the bishopric of Winchester and among the good things he did for his people, paid for out of his own pocket, was the construction of a stone bridge on the west side of the town. One time there came a woman over the bridge with her lap full of eggs, and a certain man, who was reckless and violent, fought with her, and broke all her eggs. And it happened that the holy bishop came that way and he bade the woman let him see her eggs, and he lifted his hand and blessed those eggs, and they were made whole, each one.

  Why did the man fight with her? Brother Bernard said.

  Maybe he desired her eggs, Brother Andrew said.

  Maybe he desired her, Brother Bernard said.

  I admonished them that in their speculations about the particulars of the story, they had moved away from its moral, of which, if we were to preach it, we would intend our listeners to apprehend the greatness of the bishop Saint Swithin, his capacity for miracles, but above all to remark how he, like Christ with sinners, had the power to heal something that was broken, to make it whole.