The Book of Crows

by Sam Meekings

  He brings forth a low, rolling cough, which somehow transforms into a laugh.

  ‘You will struggle with this confession if you continue to try to see the best in me, brother. I shall not detail the petty sins of that time, for those are ones for which I have done my penance. As I told you, it is of two larger sins that I wish to speak.

  ‘It was barely two seasons later that I returned to my uncle’s house late one evening, having evaded my household chores for the whole day, to find him red-faced and drunk in the smoky kitchen, clutching a meat knife in his good hand. I remember my first impulse was to puff out my chest to attempt to evoke a fearlessness I did not feel.

  ‘I do not recall the words he shouted, the curses he spat as his wife and my mother cowered in the corner. I remember only the rage which stung my senses, the feeling that a storm was sparking through my veins. I spat at him. He leapt up and swung at me. The next few moments are messy, confused, though I have revisited them many times over the years. I threw myself behind one of the wooden posts supporting the low roof, then tumbled, ducked, rolled, as he leapt at me, the flailing blade glinting in the candlelight. The Devil was strong within him, and yet for once I was determined not to give in. I kicked out at him, sending him tripping over a wooden stool and crashing into the hay, from where he emerged even more red and enraged than before. He dashed towards me, and as I spun away I felt the tip of the knife slash through the top of my shoulder. You have perhaps seen the scar, Rosso. I sagged, stumbled, pressed my hand to the wound.

  ‘His upraised hand hovered above me, and I remember his sudden laugh – a clear, bitter laugh – as he easily swatted away my pathetic attempts at defensive punches. It was then that my mother stepped forward to stop him, though she was soon knocked out of the way in the chaos. I kicked once more at my uncle’s knee, knocking him off balance, before running for the door amid the sound of screams and oaths. But before I could reach it he was on top of me, his fist sending me sprawling towards the table, and as the blows rained down upon my head and chest I could only be thankful that he had lost his knife in the scuffle.

  ‘It was only the shrill wails of my aunt which stopped him. He turned from me, then stumbled back in horror. I tried to rise on shaking feet, bruised, aching and uncomprehending – he had never before stopped a beating before I had squealed and cried and begged his forgiveness for neglecting my duties. Then I saw the mauve puddle spreading across the floor.

  ‘My mother lay gurgling in front of us, her pale hands twitching nervously around the gash in her neck as if they were starlings come to drink from a babbling stream. Though I rushed to her side, there was little I could do to stem the flow where the knife had struck. Her lips moved, but no intelligible sound emerged. She was coughing, cawing, clawing for breath.

  ‘You will forgive me, brother, if I do not dwell on those last hours. I do not have the strength left in me to summon her final moments. I only tell you of this terrible night because I cannot forget it, because from that day on all my actions were driven by an insatiable enmity towards the injustice I saw everywhere in the world.

  ‘My uncle paid as little as he could for a cheap plot in the cemetery behind the church. Father Sebastiano buried my mother beside the freshly turned earth of my sister’s grave. He gave candles and prayers that might help her soul in Purgatory, and that was the last time I saw the old priest before I killed him.’

  I force my drowsy eyes open and look at Lovari. He is neither smiling nor scowling, lying back on his bed of cushions in the soporific desert heat.

  ‘This is undoubtedly a metaphor, brother, and a clever one at that, for every student must in some way “kill” his teacher by surpassing him. And with your many achievements and scholarly renown you have certainly risen above your first mentor.’

  ‘You know, Rosso, that I have no time for such laboured figures of speech.’

  ‘Then you mean you did what any son would do for a suffering father, and helped end the life of a man in pain, just as men have no choice but to cut the throat of a dog wounded in the hunt. What you did was merciful, to save an old man the anguish and indignities of a crippling illness.’

  ‘No. He may have been old and hunched, but he still had that same fiery energy burning inside him. I told you that there were two sins of which you have to know. The killing of Father Sebastiano is the first.’

  A good confessor should ease the passing of the flesh by making steadfast the undying soul of the sinner. He should offer comfort while also urging the sinner to seek redemption before it is too late. And, before administering the final sacrament, he should do his best to ensure that the sinner is delivered into his Master’s arms. As I sit beside the pale, sweating form of Brother Lovari and listen to his wild tale, however, the task at hand seems more arduous than ever.

  Despite his frail body, alternating between shivering and sweating, his heavy eyes pressed closed and his breaths cracked and laboured, he seems determined that against all precedent he should lead the confession, and sees fit to admonish me when I make even the smallest of interruptions. In my only other experience of acting as confessor, young Nazario asked for absolution for the small sins of vanity and lust, while when I watched Lovari give the last rites to D’Antonio and then Salvitici, both men spoke of little but the distant homes they would now never return to. Yet I well know that Lovari is nothing like any of the other men I have ever met.

  My sick friend clutches a hand to his chest, as if to calm the erratic rhythms of his heart. His eyelids flutter, and he draws in a deep, wheezing breath.

  ‘On the very same day my mother was buried I left the village, for I knew whatever happened to me out on my own would be preferable to returning to my uncle’s home. Though I had no money, and nothing upon my person save a stolen knife and an extra pair of boots for the winter months, I felt the grand confidence of youth. There was only one possible destination.

  ‘It was easy to believe, as an unworldly thirteen-year-old, that the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily contained the whole world. It had passed through a hundred different hands, and each had left their fingerprint indelibly pressed onto it. The learning of the Greeks, the might of the Romans, the feasts and sacred mysteries of the Byzantines, the logic and mathematics of the Saracens, the law courts and new customs of the Norman kings. Strolling through the central districts of Palermo for the first time, I passed the ruins of idolatrous temples, fine stone mosques watched over by bearded imams, small synagogues, and all manner of churches, both domed and towered. I stared open-mouthed at lemons and oranges from the East set for sale alongside great husks of hardened cheese, and heard people conversing in courtly French or Arabic as well as in Latin, Greek and, of course, the natural Sicilian dialect – one that even you, my brother, with your renown as a linguist, may have trouble untangling should you one day venture to my homeland.

  ‘In a city like Palermo, it was easy to disappear among the crowds. With my gift for languages, I found I could impersonate almost anyone. I was a prince, walking with my head held high through the markets and demanding, in a drawling city accent, foods to be added, naturally, to the bills of the most famous households. I was a light-skinned Mohammedan boy, my tongue testing out the few Arabic phrases I had picked up outside the gates, covering my head and cleaning my feet as I wandered into a mosque. I was a young monk in training, unleashing an endless torrent of Latin, giving out platitudes and loosely spun parables in return for gifts outside the great palace. Once I had gained my audience’s confidence, there was nothing easier than wrangling a loan or, if that failed, slipping my hand deftly into their purses.

  ‘Do not look at me like that, brother. I was young and hungry, and at war with the world. Whenever I felt guilty about what I was doing, I made myself recall the words of the Apostle Matthew: “Do not store up treasures for yourself, that might be consumed by rust or moths.” All I was doing, I told myself, was teaching the people I met an important lesson about the transience of all human wealth. It was tr
uly astounding how few adults questioned a well-spoken young man with a practised smile.

  ‘I fell in with a crowd of thieves and fraudsters, who introduced me to liquor and taught me how to slip unnoticed among the tumultuous rabble in the market squares, to move unseen through the throngs surrounding rogue apothecaries hawking love potions to the unrequited, or into the background of the wrestling matches between desperate men outside the taverns. I felt invincible for a time, and like the other young men I spent my time with, I rarely thought of the gallows that might await us if we got caught.

  ‘You will not be surprised to hear that this idyll was short-lived. It was a mere month or two before something happened that would change my life forever. I was sitting outside a cobbler’s shop, chewing on some bread that had fallen from the back of a wagon, when a large shadow bore down upon me. I dropped my loaf with a start as a strong pair of hands gripped suddenly about my neck. I struggled hard against this sudden attack, and when I managed to pull away and spin around, I was amazed to find that my assailant was a priest. Not a meek old custodian of grace like Father Sebastiano, however, but a young stocky fellow full of bile. Indeed, this dark-haired priest seemed only a few years older than myself. Before I could escape, however, he shoved me to the ground, where he proceeded to place a few well-aimed kicks to my ribs. Winded and hugging my knees to my chest against the blows, I saw only that he had hitched up his ecclesiastical robe so to be able to put greater force into his kicks. I curled tighter, like an egret arched around its nestlings.

  ‘When the brawny priest finally grew tired, he wiped the spittle from his lips and shouted at me to get up and follow him. As I did not dare move, he grabbed me by my neck and pulled me up, before pushing me forward, tumbling, tripping and dizzy, down the deserted street. We continued this way for half an hour, winding a serpentine trail through backstreets and narrow alleys, across cobblestones and squelching tracks, past mansions and hovels. When I was thoroughly disoriented, a slap across the shoulders brought me to a halt outside a tall wooden building.

  ‘It was a grand, ramshackle complex that looked as if a Moorish palace had been fused with a rustic barn. I remember being relieved, because it was highly improbable that such a strange abode would be home to any judicial authority, though it was clear that many people dwelt within. The entrance hall was full of ill-dressed families, waiting for alms. They showed little interest in the pair of us as we ascended the narrow curl of stairs. The walls wore a few bedraggled tapestries, their interweaving patterns clearly owing a debt to the Saracen artists, yet the bleeding Christ hooked upon a knot of rough oak looming from the wall above us announced that this was no heathen abode. The priest called out a welcome in an impenetrable accent as we climbed, then stopped me outside a closed door.

  ‘You may find it strange that, throughout the attack that had rudely interrupted my lunch, and then during the march across the city and into the peculiar house, I never once wondered why I had been singled out in this way. You see, already at that young age I felt thoroughly reconciled with fate. Just as I had never stood up to my uncle, so I did not think to ask the dark-haired priest why he had kicked me, nor why he had led me to that bewildering building.

  ‘The door was soon hauled open and we were ushered in, though I could see little of those inside, for the room was almost pitch-black. My eyes strained through the gloom, and I naturally assumed that the place bore the sooty scars of some terrible fire. However, it soon became apparent that the darkness was simply a product of the fact that the walls, floor and ceiling had all been painted black. I felt, my brother, as though I was Jonah inside the trembling dark of the whale’s gut. Indeed, although I heard voices, it took many minutes before I was able to make out the faces of the speakers.

  ‘Two men, pointing at the ceiling, were conversing in whispers. One was tall and somewhat stooped, with tiny squinting eyes. His long habit of white serge with drooping cowl, and his domed, shaven head marked him out as a Carthusian. In truth, however, in the near darkness, he looked like nothing so much as a giant newt. His face was pasty and white, his lips long and rubbery. His companion, to my initial surprise, not only wore a long beard, but also the luscious, flowing black cassock associated with the Byzantine Church. He looked much older than the Carthusian and his impressive girth attested to the fact that the dietary requirements of his own order were nowhere near as prescriptive. Despite their differences, the two men seemed to be conversing quite amicably as they gestured above their heads. I followed their outstretched hands and saw that the ceiling was not as uniformly black as the rest of the room, and was in fact covered with tiny dabs of white paint, intended, I later realised, to represent the many constellations of the heavens.

  ‘The Byzantine cleared his throat and turned to the dark-haired priest who had brought me to them. He spoke with a thick, heavy accent, as if his tongue had been preyed upon by a whole hive of insolent bees.

  ‘“So, Alessio, this is the boy?”

  ‘My attacker grunted his affirmation.

  ‘“And you are still convinced that he is possessed?”

  ‘“As I said, some of our people have spotted him outside the mosque, some at church, some in the bathhouses, and each time he was speaking a different language. I tracked him all morning and heard him speaking flawless Latin, and saying he was in training to be a priest.”

  ‘The Byzantine looked at the Carthusian and raised his wiry eyebrows. “Then they are legion. I have performed a number of exorcisms before, but never with more than one Devil inhabiting the flesh, and never with one so young.”

  ‘The Carthusian nodded gravely, but the man they called Alessio – my attacker – soon spoke up.

  ‘“Couldn’t we find a herd of swine to send the demons into? The Lord’s example ought to be good enough for us, after all. There’s a livestock market down near the law courts today, we could still catch it if we hurry.”

  ‘“I do not think the Good Lord had to deal with Sicilian pig-farmers, Alessio. I doubt they would think twice about setting upon us if we were to damage their livelihood in any way. No, I think trepanation may be the solution here. I have heard nothing but praise for its results.”

  ‘Alessio looked sceptical, and I began to wonder whether I would be given a chance to speak for myself at all. “What’s trepanation?” he asked.

  ‘“Well, it is truly a fascinating process.” When the Carthusian finally joined the exchange, I remember being somewhat alarmed by the unnaturally high pitch of his voice. “It is quite remarkable what these men of science can do, really quite remarkable. They have endeavoured to design a metal cage that can be fixed to the afflicted man’s head. Once they are thus held down, it is possible, using a sharpened gyre, to drill into the skull. This allows the demons to escape from their hiding place within the murky humours of the brain.”

  ‘“So it works?”

  ‘“Oh yes, it seems to work marvellously. The way the afflicted man screams and writhes while the hole is being drilled is surely proof of the demons’ wild excitement. Also, when the operation is finished, and the metal cage removed, the man beneath always seems calm and quiet, owing to the success of the exorcism. And it would suit our purpose, for the demons ought to be quite easy to capture as they come rushing out. However, procuring a qualified apothecary with the necessary equipment to perform the procedure on such a young man will not be cheap.”

  ‘The three holy men lapsed into silence. I must admit, I was not much encouraged by the turn of their conversation, so I decided to intervene.

  ‘“Please excuse my interruption, sirs, but I fear there has been some mistake. I have no demons within me.”

  ‘The Byzantine raised one of his voluminous eyebrows.

  ‘“How old are you?”

  ‘“Fifteen.”

  ‘“You would swear that on the Holy Book?”

  ‘“Alright, I’m one month short of fourteen years.”

  ‘“And you live on the streets, yes?”


  ‘“For now. But only for a short time, father. I have no doubt that the Lord will soon guide me towards an occupation and a purpose.”

  ‘“Then how, if you are neither rich nor possessed, do you have such skill with languages? I warrant that you are not from one of the princely families who may pay for private tutors, and you lack both the reserve and the refined manners I would expect from a child who had spent years in a monastery.”

  ‘And so I told them of the angry home from which I had made my escape, of Father Sebastiano and the awakening of my imagination (which we all know, brother, is the beginning of hope), of my studies and ideas, and even of my rage and disappointment when my new-found faith was tested. I told them how I had worked to learn the language of the Scriptures simply because I had to, just as when a man climbing the steepest of cliffs will keep grappling upwards, for the only other option is to fall back into the depths and perish.

  ‘Alessio muttered a distinctly unpriestly curse. “Father Teodoro will be most disappointed. This was supposed to be his experiment,” he huffed.

  ‘“Then you shall have to be most diplomatic when you tell him of your mistake, Alessio.”

  ‘The bearded man waved a long, gnarled finger at Alessio as he spoke, and with a sigh my surly attacker nodded and left the room.’

  Lovari begins to cough, and I encourage him to rest his voice. He will not listen, however, and shakes his head at my suggestions that he might care to sleep a little and regain his strength. He suddenly starts to shift violently in his blankets, as though trying to shake himself free of his illness. Outside the tent, I can hear the high whirr of those despicable foreign sandflies biding their time, waiting for my exit so that they may dip down upon me and feast. My skin itches just thinking about them. The most recent red blotches are, mercifully, hidden beneath my robes – I do not want any of the men to mistake them for a punishment sent from Heaven.