Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  Such ‘indiscretions’ became an important topic. Giles had spoken about the sexual act as ‘the pleasure of Paradise’, a fleshly way to embrace the divine. We spoke frankly about this. Finally, I told everyone about my adventures in the Harelle with Adrian and Christophe, which resulted in my only experience of mystical union.

  I suggested that spiritual love could not exist without carnal love, just as we could not exist without eating and drinking. Such pleasures bring us into a union with all that is alive. God resides in the pleasures of nature, not in the authority that condemns them. These sentiments weren’t far from what Bloemardine’s imagery expressed, but we meant it much more concretely.

  ‘Sensual pleasure should take the place of baptism,’ said Adele, and we lifted glasses to that. Time to become drunk with ‘unspeakable wonders’.

  Discussion turned towards public affairs and the price of bread as often as spiritual matters. We mocked and disparaged all authority. I started to feel as if I had come in a circle back to the concerns of the Harelle.

  As we made ourselves comfortable on the alderman’s cushions, talk turned to banter and ultimately to more touch, invoking my ‘Holy Trinity’ with Christophe and Adrian. With the erotic explorations of the group in full swing, I tried to repeat that experience in various combinations.

  Sometimes the invisible cords that bound me to the two men from my past pulled tighter, and I felt their vital pulse. Something had to happen, something I needed to do . . . But always, I fell short of that.

  When it was my turn to give a lecture, my talk naturally centred on ‘entwinement’. I suggested that bonds may be forged in the heat of battle, the light of pleasure, or even in anger. We become entwined in ways we don’t understand, and feel the effect of each other’s actions in mysterious ways.

  ‘Notes from afar reverberate in my ears, in my heart. It is a breath, a motion which I yearn to complete. It’s a sensual impetus that works from a distance. Maybe this happens more than we realise, but the possibilities pass us by unless we become conscious of it and strengthen its effects.’

  Stefan, a reserved man new to the group, spoke up for the first time. ‘Perhaps we can draw on this capacity to enable us to communicate over long distances.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. Could there be a practical use for such a mysterious process? ‘It took so long to find out what was happening in Paris during the Harelle. Most of the time we didn’t know what anyone was doing. We could use this entwinement to communicate.’

  Matthys, who often dismissed our more inward-looking concerns, perked up. ‘We can use this to outwit the Inquisition, and smash it once and for all.’

  This sent Stefan into a long dissertation. He recounted an exposition called De Luce . . . ‘On Light’. Written by a monk called Grosseteste, this study proposed that the universe started with a big explosion. ‘If the fabric of the universe originated in this explosion, we are all cut from the same cloth,’ he said. ‘We only need to uncover our common threads.’

  ‘Porete has written about a similar idea,’ I suggested. ‘She described how two souls that are united on one plane will recognise each other on another, and they can’t hide from each other.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have “common threads” with everybody,’ objected Matthys. ‘Not with the people who persecute us!’

  William listened to all this quietly, then said, ‘To say the universe originated with an explosion contradicts the precept that God created the universe.’

  ‘So what if it does?’ Stefan stood up and paced about. ‘And why say there is only one universe? There could be many universes. That’s not even a new idea. It was banned by the Pope over a century ago, which is all the more reason we should talk about it now.’

  Then a dozen arguments exploded. Even among the heretics, you will find more heresy. We talked and contemplated, debated and pontificated. Our discussion ranged to alchemy and attempts to grasp the physical universe. Both the sensual and mystical dimension flowed from this as normally as water runs downhill in a stream.

  *

  Then the Inquisition arrested William, and took him to Cambrai to appear before Henri of Selles. Pierre d’Ailly was continuing his mission to ‘extirpate the remains of the nefarious heresy’ and he had appointed Henri to investigate our group.

  I was astonished to hear that William would be on trial alongside Giles, a dead man. Giles would’ve found that funny.

  But there was nothing to laugh at when they took Adele and Henryk to Cambrai. I was left with the children. To them I became known as Grandmother Seraphine, though their own grandparents were long dead.

  I wondered why the Inquisition didn’t take me, while they took my hosts. Perhaps the inquisitors decided that leaving me with the children would be punishment enough. I’d been a decent teacher for the little devils. I could indeed sit them down and teach them letters for an hour or so. But to pay attention to their constant mischief all day and night was another thing entirely.

  Fortunately, others in our group helped. Matthys showed a surprising talent for entertaining children and getting them to do what they should. Jehanne finally made arrangements for the children to stay with Adele’s relatives in Tournai and accompanied them on their journey.

  Then the house was quiet, save for Matthys sitting around with a flask of mead, muttering darkly.

  ‘We wait for them to take us, too. We have to do more. The Inquisition has held people in thrall for years. We must break their power, show they’re vulnerable.’

  ‘And how are they vulnerable?’

  ‘They are human. They want us to believe they represent the divine when they trample it under their boots. But an inquisitor can die like any human being. When they come sniffing around here again, they’ll get the reception they deserve. And I don’t mean a few pebbles thrown by children.’

  *

  I didn’t see Matthys for a while. Word came later from Cambrai that William had recanted. This earned him a relatively mild sentence: three years in prison, followed by banishment from Brussels.

  I always liked William, though he was more sedate than the rest of us. I didn’t want to think he could betray us. I hated the thought that I could do the same under torture, so I asked a wise woman to concoct a poison to take if I was seized.

  I still have this tiny vial of poison though I hope I will never have to use it, now that we live in Bohemia.

  Perhaps William offered a long account of Giles’s habits. That would have given the inquisitors a lot to chew on, and they couldn’t harm a corpse.

  A sister called around, an old beguine who had associates in Cambrai. She told us that Henri of Selles was seen on the road to Brussels.

  *

  Then they took me. I was at the market. And silly fool that I was, I’d left my poison at home.

  I don’t like to think about those days now. But if I close my eyes they could be with me in an instant.

  They kept me alone in a cell. Would they remember me from the Harelle? Did William say anything about me?

  If they questioned me, I could tell them more about Giles running about with a plate of meat on his head. Tell them how he slept with every woman in the group, and every man too.

  I waited to be tortured. Yes, I’d say it was all Giles’s doing. He claimed to be a prophet and he bewitched us. Giles would be proud. I would quote at length from Bloemardine. Her books have been passed around Brussels for over a century and they haven’t even been banned.

  I journeyed inwards to find Adrian and Christophe, and the parts of myself still entwined with them. I heard the chiming bells that called for freedom, and the steady clicking of looms that cautioned me to stay patient and think. I tried to sleep. Memories of Rouen filled my dreams . . .

  The scent of grilled fish at the market on an overcast summer day. Adrian in discussion with a beghard preacher, Christophe laughing at them both. A young blond boy, who looked like Adrian.

  Then the three of us gliding down the canal in Ghent; a
utumn leaves fall past my face, a yellow one settles on Adrian’s hair.

  That was where I tried to keep my thoughts, and myself.

  The inquisitors didn’t always seem sure what to do with me. They brought food. They would ask questions. Do you regard the sex act as a sinless ‘pleasure of Paradise’? What is your concept of sin, do you deny the authority of the Church? What infernal methods do you have of spreading your beliefs?

  I gave them lengthy, rambling and ultimately harmless comments about Giles and Bloemardine. As I spoke, I listened again for Christophe’s riotous carillon. Infernal methods. Mere thoughts would betray me as much as any words. They would show on my face. Exploding universes, entwinement . . . desire and designs smeared across boundaries in a heightening of heresy.

  No, no . . . let the mad clang of bells drive all that from my mind as I talked and talked about absolute nonsense.

  Then they asked about Stefan.

  He’s not from Brussels, I told them. He only came to a couple of meetings. He said he’d heard about us in a tavern. Is that where you heard about us too?

  Then they’d be called from my cell, and I was left for another day.

  They didn’t appear at all for some uncountable time. I was parched with thirst, empty with hunger. The worst was when I actually welcomed the sight of my gaoler.

  I was told to go. There was no trial, but I was banished from Brussels.

  So I eventually made my way to Tournai to join Jehanne and the children.

  *

  Adele and Henryk had been released too. I found them in Tournai. They seemed shrunken and subdued, but still determined. I was confused by our relative good fortune, once they had dealt with William. Perhaps our alderman had intervened, or the authorities wanted to avoid an outbreak of disturbances in Brussels. Perhaps.

  ‘Have you heard anything from Matthys? Did they arrest him too?’

  ‘Matthys has disappeared,’ said Henryk. ‘And we’ve heard that someone tried to kill Henri of Selles as he crossed a ford. Unsuccessfully, I’d add. Whether the two have any connection, I can’t say.’

  Matthys, an assassin? He seemed to be more mouth than anything else, but perhaps I was wrong.

  ‘And what of others? What about that odd Stefan, with his theories of the universe? The inquisitors were very interested in him.’

  No sign of him either.

  We tried to find out more. None of our ‘spies’ picked up anything. Not Hilde the baker who had a shop near the Cambrai court and prison, nor the man who washes the floors at the Brussels gaol. The alderman could provide no information.

  I spent a lot of time walking about Tournai, through the streets and the marketplace. I was happy to be living in a French-speaking town, though they spoke a confusing Picard dialect. The Czechs didn’t understand much of it either when we came to Bohemia, which was why they called us Pikarts.

  Though many beguinages had closed, there were a still a few small houses where unmarried women worked on tapestries or taught a mixture of rich and poor students. A dissident family here or there . . . Like-minded people lived in this city too. A new city, a new life. We tried to make the best of it.

  But then, in my wanderings I sensed people following me. A movement as I turned, an unknown face that appeared with too much regularity.

  No friendly aldermen offered meeting places where we could see the stars. New groups formed, meeting in the woods. Always, we were looking over our shoulders. No, we weren’t in Brussels any more.

  If the Inquisition prosecuted us again, we would face the stake as unrepentant heretics. Chimes rang in my ears, warning chimes. The sound of looms urged me: go, go, go.

  Then the word came, passed from traveller to traveller, to the dissenters of Tournai. Matthys had fled to Prague, a place where reform livened the air.

  His message: join me in Bohemia.

  *

  A tongueless bell should not make a noise, but I could swear its ringing enters my heart, with much more power than mere sound. It reaches inside and squeezes. I hear it with my entire body.

  My morning lethargy dissolves in its wake. Finally I’m out, walking with my friends. The streets are quiet, too quiet. Vaclav’s tavern is still closed. Less activity at the Horse Market.

  Soon we approach our Lady of the Snows.

  No one is around there now.

  ‘Zelivsky must be spreading rumours to get more people to his sermons,’ I say. But look, the courtyard and the surrounding roads are littered with debris, the leavings of struggle and scuffle. A ripped piece of parchment. A child’s boot, an officer’s cudgel. And a battle-flail, a short club with a chain and a spiked striking head. Many of these have been appearing around the city in the past months.

  I pick up the parchment. There are only a few marks on it. I could use it.

  I point to the flail. ‘One of you should take this . . .’

  Then I laugh. ‘Sign of my advanced years, eh? I take a piece of parchment, and leave the flail to the likes of you.’

  Now I hear distant noise. From the Horse Market, and the New Town Hall. Random shouts of commotion. A cheer.

  People are running towards us. ‘We need help at the New Town Hall! Go there! Our prisoners are free. The king’s councillors have been thrown out the window!’

  ‘Who? Out the window . . .’ I pick up my cane and get ready to move again.

  It’s happening, I think, it’s happening!

  Then a deep tolling sounds from the empty church. It’s so loud and sudden my companions jump. I jump as best as I can, with joy. The tolling quickens. The rhythms stop, start and increase, a dam of sound bursting open. They make music I’ve never heard from Our Lady of Snows, I haven’t heard this cadence in Bohemia and I haven’t heard it since 1382, when the humble people proclaimed their triumph in Rouen.

  ‘We have to go in,’ I say to my companions.

  ‘Seraphine, no . . .’ Though they are startled by the sudden ringing, my friends have other things on their minds. Of course, I’d feel the same way.

  ‘Yes, you go on to the Town Hall. I’ll join you. Whatever’s happening will happen, regardless of what an old woman like me does.’

  I make a shooing motion with my hands. ‘Go! I’ll be fine. I can look after myself.’

  With a glance backwards, they hurry away. Then I go inside and ascend the steps.

  How long did Christophe pull on those ropes, ringing his composition into the silent air? Now its tumult carries over the distance, and over the years. Entwinement.

  I clutch the banister as I make my way up the steps. The cadence vibrates through my arm. The notes radiate from my core, pushing me upwards.

  I make it to the top of the bell tower. Yes, the empty ropes are swinging. The bells continue ringing, their notes rising and rising, a cross-rhythm starts. It’s enough to dance to, enough to make me cry.

  ‘Adrian . . . Christophe . . .’ Their names entwine with my tongue.

  Is it a peal of triumph, or a warning that the king’s army has entered our city again? Perhaps it is both. I look out over Prague as the bell sings in my head. I see the crowds around the New Town Hall. Is that splash of colour the robe of a councillor on the ground, one of the men installed by the king, gaolers of our prisoners in the dungeon? I try to see more, see if troops are moving. I look over the river, find the jagged teeth of the Hungry Wall. I shake my fist at the wall and laugh.

  When the bells start to subside, the presence of my two lovers still animates the air. They will always be with me. We are entwined.

  I turn and make my way down the stairs. Slow, but methodical, I’m soon on solid ground. I get my cane going double-time as I head to the New Town Hall, to join my comrades and see what I can find.

  Ω

  The fact that the Inquisition seemed initially to treat this group of heretics with relative leniency (three-year prison sentences, banishment) has been noted by a few historians. Perhaps they were helped by some of their influential members, such as the ald
erman in Brussels mentioned in this account. Perhaps it was the threat of large-scale civil disorder in Flanders, an industrially advanced area even in the Middle Ages, with an active and discontented workforce. The assassination attempt on Henri of Selles could have been seen as a portent of things to come unless the group was excised in a more surgical and strategic manner.

  But it was the Church’s interest in the movement’s beliefs that is of most note. From Seraphine Duplexis’s account it appears that they may have stumbled upon the secrets of quantum entanglement – what she calls entwinement. Her connection with Adrian and Christophe seems close to what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’. One member, Stefan, expounded both Grosseteste’s theory of the Big Bang and the possibility of multiple universes. Is it significant that he doesn’t turn up in Tournai or in Prague? Did he disappear into the clutches of the Inquisition? With such ideas, was he the one they really wanted to find, with the others just so much heretical flotsam and jetsam?

  And was this why Seraphine Duplexis’s writing ended up deep in the Vaults at the Vatican? Or was it simply the Church’s fear of divergent thought, of heterodoxy, of heresy? As her friend Matthys said of the strong arm of the Church, the Inquisition, ‘They want us to believe they represent the divine when they trample it under their boots.’

  1541

  When the conquistador Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire in the early 1530s, the primary interest of the Spanish was the vast wealth of precious metals they found. But close behind that was the urge to convert the heathen native people to the Catholic faith – and that meant that all traces of their own beliefs and traditions must be destroyed.

  The two interests coincided in this account from what would shortly be called Peru. An Inca noble was believed to hold the secret of hidden riches, and the Church was called on to draw that knowledge from him whilst, in the process, hoping to lead him to the Christian faith.