by Sam Meekings
He looks up into my eyes. His face is far redder than it was only a few hours ago when his anguished cries summoned me to his tent, and his lips are dry and broken.
‘Yes, I know what you are thinking. D’Antonio, Salvitici and then Nazario – all three suffered the same symptoms in the same order, and all three were given to the Lord before the sun had completed a single rotation around the earth. It is the desert sickness. I fear I do not have much time left.’
‘That kind of talk will not aid your recovery. You must strengthen your resolve.’
He shakes his head. ‘Let us be honest, brother. You saw me last night, and you see me now. You were with Nazario only yesterday morning. We both know how this illness progresses, and how it will end. I am grateful for your attempts to bring comfort to my enfeebled body, yet my spirit is still strong, and I am not afraid to face death. Indeed, I shall welcome it. The mysteries of Heaven are things of which I have spent my life dreaming.’
‘The Lord may yet have other plans for you.’
‘I think not, though I am not vain enough to anticipate His grand designs. But let me ask you, Rosso, are you ready?’
I shuffle my knees back a little, trying to find a more suitable pose, for in truth I am not used to staying long on such soft cushions and pillows, having spent my formative years kneeling for hours on the cold, hard stone of the chapel.
‘I … I trust when the moment comes I shall not flinch from it.’
Lovari let out a hoarse laugh. ‘No, brother, I don’t mean death! You are still a young man, in the rudest of health. You need not
worry about that yet. No, I mean taking charge of the party here. Are you ready to lead such a large group, to take charge of the retinue and finish our mission?’
I must admit I am a little piqued at such a question, for over these last three days, before he too fell ill, he has seen me administer last rites, perform funerals and calm many of the frightened men in our retinue with my well-chosen homilies and readings. However, I judge it best not to argue with such a frail man.
‘I will put my faith in the Lord. He will guide me.’
‘They can be a rough bunch, as bad as any heathens. And remember, they have been far from their families for close to two years now. I know you and I differ on our preferred choice of sermons, but I would advise you to take heed and follow my example by railing against the sins of the rich and the idle, and detailing the fates that await those persons after death, for the men take much pleasure in knowing that the inequalities of the world will one day be righted. Also, make sure you apply the same rules to the foreigners as to our own countrymen if you do not wish to risk sowing discord throughout the camp. You will have to harden yourself, my brother. I am sorry to place such a burden on you. I did not expect something like this to happen.’
‘No one expected it. Yet perhaps you might take a little comfort that your suffering brings you closer to the Lord.’
Lovari snorts. ‘The ecstasy of suffering? I confess I have never had much time for that idea.’
‘Yet the knowledge of pain brings us closer to the experience of the Christ. This was one of the first things I remember learning at the seminary. Pain helps us to transcend ourselves, to empathise with the greatest sacrifice ever known.’
‘That is the theology of tyrants and slave drivers. Our Lord suffered on the cross so that we might be free from suffering. The presence of the Lord is heaven, and His absence is suffering. Thus I do not suffer, I only wait.’
I say nothing. It is tempting to point out that I have read the same tracts that he has, that I have made careful studies of the documents from both Councils of Nicea, have read the Gospels in their original Greek as well as Saint Jerome’s sublime Latin, have composed my own amendments and additions to Anselm’s ontological argument and Aquinas’s five proofs and have amassed, in only a few years, a reputation for scholarly erudition that stretches far beyond my native Assisi. However, Lovari is my elder and, for all that we disagree, I have come to respect him. I have even been entertaining the idea that the looseness with which he interprets some of the central tenets of our faith, which when we first met did little but arouse my contempt, is simply one of the ways in which the strength of my own faith is being put to the test.
‘I see you do not agree, my brother. That is the beauty of grace: to some it comes as a bird, to others as a wolf. Do not worry, there are no snooping priors here to castigate us for the tiniest deviations of our beliefs.’
‘Snooping priors? The very idea is ridiculous. I have never met a priest who was not honest, compassionate and benevolent.’
Lovari suddenly begins to cough, great hacking croaks that sound as though he has swallowed the whole desert and all the storms it keeps. I wait patiently for him to finish, then wipe the spittle from his cracked lips.
‘Then count yourself lucky. There are some men so unscrupulous they would use faith as a mask for their ambitions. I am sure you do not need me to tell you, brother, of how lowly a creature man may sometimes be.’
‘I may have spent much of my life in cloisters, but that does not mean I do not understand the world outside. I concur that man is a wretched, fallen thing.’
As I speak, I take the bowl of pottage and raise the spoon to Lovari’s lips, but he shakes his head. There was a time I fed the dying abbot back in Assisi. I cannot have been more than twelve. The elderly curate was calm, contemplative and silent as he faced his final hours. I can see that this is not going to be like that.
‘You must eat, brother.’
‘Perhaps later. Listen, Rosso, put a cushion beneath my head. That’s it, good. Now, I want to ask you something. There is no reason for us to pretend that I will be able to see our mission through to its completion. You have grown under my tutelage, and will surely go on to become a notable servant of the Cross and, dare I say it, a remarkable scholar. You are the only person here whom I can trust. This is why I ask if you will be my confessor.’
‘It would be my honour, brother, to listen and absolve you of all your sins.’
Again he coughs.
‘I am not sure we have time to go through all my sins. You need to know what has happened, for there may still be a chance. There are two sins you must know of … But I run ahead of myself. I must explain everything, or else you will not understand.’
Lovari takes a deep, hoarse breath. He looks up at me and smiles, the type of tender look I imagine an elder brother might give his sibling. I am mildly disconcerted; nevertheless, I once again remind myself of the Fourth Lateran Council’s proposals for the confession. I bend my head, and intone the words that only the previous afternoon I had spoken over poor young Nazario.
‘Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord, compassionate and true, grant us your mercy. Immaculate Maria, Holy Mother of —’
‘There’s no need for all of that. I seek neither absolution nor your suggestions on how I might do penance. I require you only to listen, and then you will understand what must be done.’
I grit my teeth. ‘Certainly. I shall do whatever you ask.’
Lovari closes his eyes. ‘You were orphaned, or at least abandoned. Am I right? Taken to the local monastery when your parents died, or left wailing outside the huge wooden gates at the top of the city. The monks, tactful as they are, probably did not tell you which. Yet instead of taking you to an orphanage, for some reason they kept you and raised you themselves. Correct me if I am wrong.’
I feel my face flush. ‘You are correct. I presume you were given a detailed account of my history when you were paired with me for this mission.’
‘No, the inimitable Giovanni da Montecorvino does not trouble with such trifles. It is not difficult to guess from your demeanour, from the awkward way you speak to the servants, even from the way you eat your supper. A man’s personal history is inscribed in such small actions. All you have to do is pay attention.’
‘I see.’
‘What I mean to point out is that your earliest memories are
of stone walls, of men in dark robes, some silent, some fasting, others acting as though they are unaware of the very buildings through which they walk. Your early years were filled by the ringing of bells calling the brothers to prayer, by hushed and reverent voices whispering always in that most formal of ancient languages, by evensong and mass. You lived by litany and the cane and the rote. Of muddy scraps and bloody noses, of the gentle roughness of kin, of young girls and bawdy women, of helping your parents in the fields, of the shove and bustle of market day, of hunger and of hardearned laughter, I would warrant you learnt nothing. This is why I must start at the beginning, that you might see how our lives have differed, and indeed, brother, how yours might have been had the monks not taken you in.
‘I was born in the Kingdom of Sicily during the final years of the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. My father was a soldier in the Imperial Army, and died at the Battle of Parma when our side was routed from the city. I was about three years old at the time, and my sister was still in swaddling cloths. I have no memory of my father. Our family lived just outside Palermo, that great golden capital, and one of the earliest things I remember is leaving the city for a small village some days’ walk away, following close behind my mother as we headed to the house of my aunt and uncle, who had agreed to take us in after my mother was widowed.
‘Like all relatives, my mother’s sister and her husband put on a theatre of false kindness when we saw them once a year at Michaelmas, yet soon became unbearable when there was no escape from them. They were bakers, and when my uncle was not up pressing dough or plotting with others from the guild, he was drunk and garrulous.
‘I was a lonely child, more taken with daydreaming and playing with my younger sister than grinding wheat on the worn stone, and thus, for my uncle – a man who daily suffered the embarrassment and indignity of being reminded that he had sired only daughters – I was a symbol of a world that conspired to keep him down. I hated him with a fervour few can imagine. It would be tiresome to detail the petty humiliations, and the larger, terrifying brutality, he inflicted upon my sister and me.
‘Though I cannot claim to have been a testament to the virtues of athletics as a young man, neither was I the frail, pathetic creature you are perhaps imagining. I wrestled with the other boys from the smallholdings behind the old mill, and more often than not my opponent was left looking far worse than I. With the same boys I crept out at night to the cockfights and dogfights in the taller barns of the village. Yet whenever I faced my uncle, my rage turned to paralysis, my well-honed strength to impotence.
‘He was a man overcome by the whispering of the Devil at his ear. However, he would also lead us to the local church every Sabbath, and it was these two hours of haunting mass that provided a way out of the confines of my life. Instead of the curses and recriminations came the tremulous, righteous rage of the Latin sermon; instead of the sight of fists and sneers there was the loving stare of the Lord suspended above us on the cross; instead of my cowering mother, there was the Madonna, eternally caring and always prepared to act as intermediary for our prayers; instead of the stink of yeast and hare stew, there were scented candles and the lingering smell of the dark, mysterious wine.
‘The priest was a man by the name of Sebastiano. To my mind he was an exemplary preacher, able to speak so passionately that there was not a single adult in our part of town, including my own vicious uncle, who did not fear him, and yet he was mild and honest with children like myself who pushed and shoved to be able to help out at the altar. I was amazed beyond belief to find my stuttered words taken seriously by an adult. I would have been less surprised to learn that the old, white-haired priest had wings and could fly than to find that he was happy to talk earnestly with a nine-year-old. He was a hunched, choleric man, well advanced in years, and his accent marked him out as something of a curio. It was only later that I learnt that the only way our backwoods parish would be granted such a man was because he must have been exiled for the capital in the hope of keeping him from stirring up trouble.
‘Justice. Law. Sacrifice. Grace. Love. These were just vague ideas before I met Father Sebastiano, before I heard him reciting, from memory, whole pages of the Holy Book, and then translating and expostulating to anyone who would listen. He left the mysteries of the Trinity to the sacred mass – for who would dare paraphrase, interpret or summarise that profound truth when it is more fit for private contemplation? – and so, when we crowded round him after a service, he would wander between us, running his hand often through our hair as he retold the parables in a lively, humorous inflection, making each one of us feel as though it spoke directly to our own thoughts. It was then that I got that first taste of the transcendence of the Word, and was first gripped by the sense that so much more exists beyond our knowledge and comprehension.
‘When I confessed to him, I found that along with absolution he gave words of comfort; along with castigation he gave me the strength of the Word. I found myself coming to the church as often as I could. He showed me sheaths of parchment he said he had saved from his last mission, and, seeing my naïve fascination, quickly invented an excuse of returning to the latest ecumenical business so that I could attempt to read them without someone standing over my shoulder. He soon began to encourage me, to explain the symbols, to let me stay for hours looking through the precious books. I felt as though I was blind Bartimaeus suddenly granted sight by our Lord, my eyes slowly being able to make out the remote horizons of a world beyond the bakery, and becoming aware of something deeper and more deeply engrained that I could not yet name.
‘It was in this way that, as the years passed, I learnt the rigorous and enchanting skills of reading and writing that my parents had never known. I think perhaps this was one of Sebastiano’s small acts of rebellion, of getting his own back at the powers that had banished him by unleashing the mutinous effect of a little knowledge on an unsuspecting community.
‘By teaching me Latin, I felt that he gave me an amazing power over the adults around me. For now I could understand the liturgy whereas my elders could only bow their heads and submit. I think, even then, I had an idea of how the kindly priest had turned the world upside down by teaching me, and a number of others, this most sacred of things. Though many of the other young boys attended his lessons for only a number of weeks or months before suddenly disappearing and staying far from the church (events which I saw saddened the old priest greatly) I never let my resolve slip. Father Sebastiano told us that Christ would come with the Sword to vanquish the Devil who lived among us, and that we must all therefore be ready. So he set us to task. And if I learnt quicker than any of the others, repeating the conjugations of verbs under my breath as I tore the stalks from the wheat, as I sifted the grit from the flour, it was only because I believed that the fate of my undying soul depended upon it.
‘It was not long before the sickness visited our village. Great scarlet pustules bubbled upon my sister’s skin, and within days she sank into a fever. She was overrun with dark humours, and even the most extensive course of bloodletting could not stop her from coughing up her life-source. The coffin was cut from the cheapest of warped timber, a tiny box that could be hoisted on the shoulders of a single man.
‘I turned to Sebastiano for comfort, for an explanation that would ease my grief. Yet none was forthcoming. The elderly priest spoke instead about Purgatory, where my sister’s soul would flitter in torment for hundreds of years until it was purified. Prayers and tithes, the old man told me, might ease her passage. I remember running from the church, feeling abandoned and empty. I did not sleep that night, nor any other for weeks, finding that I could no longer reconcile the loving beneficence of the Lord with the true, terrible nature of my daily life.’
Lovari’s pale hand emerges from the blankets to rub at his eyes, and I offer him a sip from the bowl of water beside him.
‘You were young. The Lord allows for such passages of doubt in innocents,’ I tell him.
‘It w
as no short passage, brother. For, only ten days after my sister’s death, I made my way to the small church, which by then I had been visiting almost every evening for five years, and I saw something terrible. A young girl, the same age as my sister had been, was walking slowly from the building. Her eyes were red, her clothes were rent and her lips bloody and swollen, though she seemed to be doing all she could to compose herself. As I drew closer I saw Sebastiano hurry from the church to approach her, to calm her perhaps with some lesson from the Gospels, though I could not hear what he was saying. He laid a hand gently upon her shoulder to comfort her. This was not unusual, for I had never met a more friendly and affectionate man. Yet he pulled the same hand away from her as quickly as he could when he saw me approaching, and that made my heart flinch. He was soon smiling and waving to me as if happy to see an old friend, but that single movement had betrayed him, and I fled from the church with anger seething through my very pores, aware at last of the reason why so many other local boys had suddenly stopped attending his lessons.
‘It seemed as if in only a few weeks my entire world had been shattered, my faith and certainty torn from me. And so I grew drunk on dark humours, on melancholy and bile. I turned away from the Church and from the bitter hypocrisies I believed I had uncovered. I was barely thirteen, and thought I understood the entire world. From that day forward I would run from my uncle’s house at daybreak, shirking my allotted work to drink and fight and thieve with some of the orphans and wastrels who had been exiled from the city. We played endless games of dice, and once set fire to the barn of a farmer who tried to upbraid us.’
‘Come, friend, you surely exaggerate. You are making yourself sound as if you were the character of Vice in one of those market square morality plays. The truth is never so coarse, never so unadorned,’ I say, though mainly in order to keep him calm and stop his fever rising, for I have no doubt that much of his past was as devilish as he admits.