Sword- Part One

by D B Nielsen

  ‘Not that interesting. Everyone likes a story,’ he said, as he shrugged indifferently.

  If she felt the barb, she did not show it. She merely shook her head emphatically.

  ‘Well, you must tell me yours sometime. I’d love to hear it,’ Isabella said breathily; her expression artless.

  At this point, I spoke up; opening my mouth to intervene with some inane, harmless remark as I reined in my possessiveness. Except that it came out all wrong. ‘Well, that’s a story for another time. Perhaps St. John can write a memoir.’

  ‘You must! Why, you could be the next Theroux or Bryson or de Botton, but with an archaeological emphasis!’ Isabella said firmly, laying her hand possessively upon St. John’s coat sleeve.

  The idea of a temporary truce seemed utterly absurd – even though I understood that Isabella was only trying to be pleasant – as her charming Italian mannerisms, as ingenuous as they were, annoyed me.

  ‘Words are a cheap entertainment,’ said St. John, his eyes narrowing dangerously. It made him look like a large, dangerous beast. He stared fixedly at the pale hand draped upon his arm. Isabella immediately released him. But he softened the blow by adding, ‘But you flatter me, Signorina Donnatelli.’

  As gracious as ever, Isabella dimpled prettily and surrendered, ‘No, no, St. John. You are too modest. But I see that I am making you feel uncomfortable with such talk. So then, let us get back to the matter at hand; what is this illustration that Sage may be interested in?’

  And just like that, the gathering tension between them was dispersed like rainclouds after a storm. The faintest floral scent drifted in the air.

  ‘Take a look for yourself.’ St. John gestured to the open page as he moved away from the manuscript to allow Isabella and me more room to view the image. Yet he stood with one hand at my back, the other resting on the surface beside me, in a protective gesture. His impressive height and broad shoulders were curved around me like the wings of an angel.

  ‘Are you certain you’re all right?’ he murmured in my ear, his breath tickling my left lobe.

  I should have known he would have noticed how my body betrayed both my fears and my jealousies.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I replied again with a voice that only slightly shook. Making light of the situation, I shrugged. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ll get you something to eat afterwards. I know just the place.’

  But I barely heard his words as my entire body was tingling with latent awareness.

  No words were uttered by me as RSPA 230 was willing to reveal its mysteries at long last in the thick, gathering gloom which smothered the St. John Ritblat Gallery and trapped the air within the private reading room. It was as if the manuscript existed in a vacuum, reflected by a strange pressure that seemed to build with an intensity that made my ears feel like they were about to burst. Stillness seemed to oppressively pound in my ears, and the whisper of breath from my companions became a harsh and discordant intrusion.

  Yet it was not the dark nor the stillness filling my ears, eyes and mouth which appalled me as I began my long absorption with the illustration set before me; it was the ageless image on brittle parchment with its variations of light and kinetic energy that coaxed time back to the shadows in the room’s empty corners.

  As soon as I saw it, I knew.

  Its cosmic power was palpable – inscribed by the Wise One who existed in a time long before my own, long before it had come into the possession of the British Library – yet no fugitive iridescence escaped from its markings or from within its borders. Its power, hibernating within its design, remained harnessed by divine decree. Despite a raw feeling of unfulfilled desire, of longing and temptation, I refused to touch the curious image to animate it.

  The image lay dormant. But the sentience of the Seed flared to life. And I felt touched by a contact so ephemeral it raised no prickle of discomfort or dread.

  The manuscript opened easily to the very centre. It did not need book snakes to hold the pages in place as it rested upon the velvet book mounts so innocently. It was as if the book was meant to open to this central illustration. But only for the elect. I had the suspicion that on an ordinary viewing by any other historian, these folios would remain stuck fast as if glued together, so that prying eyes would be unable to view its hidden secrets.

  What I saw in the centre of the book, the smell of age that rose from it, and my discovery that this was meant to be a personal message from an ancestral Wise One to the current Wise One, his heir, caught my attention forcibly. Across those two folios I saw the terrible beauty of the sacred tree.

  Yet what was unexpected was that the image displayed not one but two trees. Two trees that formed a sort of hourglass. One of the trees was smaller than the other, giving it a decidedly lopsided look, though its leafy branches thinned from the solid base through its steadfast trunk. A person could almost be forgiven for mistaking it as one single tree but for the meeting of the first tree’s airy branches with the second tree’s grounded roots in the middle, interlocked on a platform that represented the real world as it lay between the realms of the Underworld and Paradise.

  Two trees in imitation of the Seed – or, perhaps, the Seed imitated the two conjoined trees. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Two trees joined together to form the Cosmic Tree. The Tree of Knowledge connecting the Underworld to Paradise. The Tree of Life connecting all the forms of creation to bear all seeds.

  Make of these two halves a whole. My alpha and my omega. I wasn’t even aware of thinking it but, as it popped into my head, it seemed right somehow.

  It was St. John who said aloud, ‘In the Tree of Life, the source is the most hidden of all hidden things; so sublime, the Jewish Kabbalah refers to it as the Keter or “crown”. It is the reservoir of all consciousness. The ultimate wisdom.’

  ‘Knowledge from Light. Knowledge from Life,’ I confided only to myself.

  Isabella leant forward, standing very still and upright for a suspended moment in time, then shivered visibly. This peculiar gesture alerted me at once. She glanced at St. John, under her pale eyebrows, and I was surprised to see how forceful, how fixated she seemed. It brought me to a mental standstill.

  ‘Why, this is a wonderfully detailed image of the sacred tree, I grant you, but it’s rather fanciful. There are other rare sacred texts that show much finer depictions of the Tree of Life and the creation myth. I would hardly call this one noteworthy.’ Isabella’s face belied her words. But though she continued to speak, I didn’t take in her remarks, nor noticed the manner in which St. John was shielding me from the Ice Queen and our surroundings.

  Intoxicated, I could smell an exotic mix of roses and vanilla, limes and honey, anastatica and almonds, and dates and orchard grass that now mingled with the smell of age that rose from the manuscript. And I heard wondrous words toll around me like the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral, pronounced clearly, resounding in my mind in a voice I knew too well – my twin sister’s voice: “Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas.”

  My heart thudded loudly in my chest as an eddying current between the illustration of the Cosmic Tree and my fixed position, where I stood immobile in the private reading room, sucked greedily as it swept everything else away, leaving only an image of an image.

  Behind the boundless lichened wall, its mossy manuscript of stone, I hear the angel with the flaming blade calling where soft earths meet. Inhuman syllables like quicksilver sliding, filings magnetised. Like music, the first note strikes a second. The second; a third. Trickling. Echoing. Bellowing. The whole world fills with dumb yearning. The primeval voice deafening in the inner ear. A fugue of love and loss, full of echoes of dead languages.

  In the glade, in the Old Kingdom, trees rise like spires. Wind-winnowed clouds pass overhead, pearl and pewter, incandescent as a sea-wet shell. The character of the garden gradually changes into a film of transparent gold, mellow yellow, lemon chiffon as the wind washes the trees of its g
reens into a bowl that fills and fills with lustrous light.

  I am walking under weighted olive branches, fit for peaceful doves. The air is glutted with the scent of cherry and apple blossom. Petals float fan-shaped around the garden from branches undressing, as wild as light piercing the membranes of shadow sheltering between ancient stone.

  Alone, barefoot, I step out onto the cool ocean of undulating grass, starry with silver dew, a butterfly movement of book muslin as light as fairy wings fluttering in the breeze. A little blue bird strutting upon a bough trills, takes the bough as its pulpit, chimes the hour that is no hour but an eternity.

  Following the current of the strait path, I press onwards; searching for the gate to Paradise. I come to the borders of understanding. Travelling towards the light, accompanied only by the murmur of bees, I approach the Messenger who kneels beside a watery shrine. His burning beauty opens to other light as he looks at me with glacial eyes that hold a reflection of colourless sky. No shade, no colour, no furrowing of the brow’s surface betray his feelings. Moonlight on ice. A mirror. As though I am not here. Moonlight on snow of his face to look upon my own face without seeing me.

  The Tree’s roots stretch deep into the bowels of the Underworld, penetrating the green skin of the earth to reveal the phosphorous bones of generations, penetrating the thick ambush of shadows. Its roots sink deep into the grasping soil of marginal land.

  Roots membraned with light and shadow. Roots in the mind’s dark; the synapses between two lobes. The original fork in existence. Divinely planted.

  Branches lace their arms together, holding their secrets close.

  In the broad bark, aged striplings, I see the many faces of Life, figures hungry for birth, suckling the breath of the breeze. Migration from the Word to Life. Life into creation. An index of Life everlasting. This is the true Book of Life. The power of Life to transcend timber. The bloom of Life intact; fish, fruit, flower, fowl, flesh. Knowledge fits a world together from fragments.

  The Messenger’s body rises majestic, an obelisk, a scaffolding of spirit to the fastness of light. Espaliered golden wings, unfurling immensities. The fountain plashes its heart; a shrine to a Persian White Desert Rose. Wingbeats rise from the water’s pure and ardent pulse as golden particles in the mind’s stream.

  And apples, silver and gold, become one whole, a pendant quivering amorphously. Enduring under the curious stars; the precision of Time’s calculations.

  In the reading room, the hush gradually lifted as my vision receded. Conversation leaked out between the shadows; the melodious voices of Isabella and St. John.

  ‘–my supervisor was particularly fascinated by this image. He brought me back, you know. After our meeting with Hamish was over, he made us return for another look. He liked a puzzle. So does every scholar worth his salt. It is the reward of every archaeologist and historian to look at the past and order it; to give the past meaning. I know of many a scholar who takes pride in being able to look history in the eye and say, “This is the cause. This is the effect. You cannot fool me.” I suppose I’ve had one or two moments like that myself. You may also know the feeling.’ His fingers drummed the reading table.

  Impatient, Isabella made an airy gesture with one pale, delicate hand. ‘Of course. The pursuit of knowledge is in my blood; a legacy from my father. I know the feeling too well. But what was it about this image that fascinated your supervisor?’

  ‘Something rather odd actually. It reminded him of a chapter from Revelations: “Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great Euphrates River. The river dried up, to provide a way for the kings who come from the east. Then I saw three unclean spirits that looked like frogs. They were coming out of the mouth of the dragon, the mouth of the beast, and the mouth of the false prophet. They are the spirits of demons that perform miracles. These three spirits go out to all the kings of the world, to bring them together for the battle on the great Day of Almighty God ...”’

  ‘It doesn’t finish there, does it? If I remember correctly from my time spent attending a Catholic school, the passage tells of the Apocalypse,’ Isabella said slowly.

  St. John kept his voice quiet, watching her. ‘Indeed. It tells of the Apocalypse. “... the spirits brought the kings together in the place that in the Hebrew is called Armageddon. Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl in the air. A loud voice came from the throne in the temple, saying, ‘It is done!’ There were flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder, and a terrible earthquake. There has never been such an earthquake since the creation of human beings; this was the worst earthquake of all! The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of all countries were destroyed. God remembered great Babylon and made her drink the wine from his cup – the wine of his furious anger.”’

  St. John’s recital ended in a few moments of monastic silence. No one spoke further, we were all engaged in our own thoughts. I’d had enough to ponder over for one day and felt dreadfully fatigued. Once, all this would have seemed too remote, too superstitious, too fanciful and quaint, but not any longer.

  ‘Well then ... it was the battle between good and evil and the fate of humankind that fascinated your mentor. I understand. You see how the Abrahamic religions draw upon Zoroastrian belief? The frog is simply a manifestation of Angra Mainyu,’ Isabella said, without moving.

  Somehow, I do not know quite how, I had managed not to draw attention to myself as I’d been caught up in another of my visions. Yet every instinct now screamed danger. Glancing back down at the image which Isabella and St. John were quietly but deeply discussing in the sparse light of the reading room, I noticed minute details that had initially failed to capture my attention.

  I wished I had thought to bring a magnifying glass as the aspect of the Underworld – a cavern? A forest? – had creatures hidden within it. Wild, lurid, malicious, forgotten things peered out. The sight of them, even in miniature, made my heart pound uncomfortably.

  The depiction of a grotesque toad positioned at the bottom of the Cosmic Tree, guarded by two fish who stared at the frog intently as if waiting, ready to act, swam before my straining, tired eyes. There was something quite chilling about it. In my unstable mood, I didn’t like the evil look of it.

  Even Isabella seemed unable to drag her eyes from the central image spread before us. Watching her flawless face, it struck me that her whole being – especially her eyes, her voice – was horrid and ugly as well as extraordinarily elegant and beautiful.

  ‘The Destructive Spirit covets the fruit of the sacred tree. And so the frog pitilessly stalks the sacred tree to invade and destroy it,’ St. John observed.

  Isabella’s face tightened, and now she was staring at St. John – the ugliness very close to the surface.

  ‘No, not to destroy it but to possess it.’ Her cornflower blue eyes were too bright, too sharp, like chips of ice.

  There was something primitive and supernatural at work in the recesses of the reading room – something destructive, alive – that made me recoil and lean into St. John’s solid bulk for comfort and protection.

  ‘Possess it? What makes you think that?’ I must have been stammering, exhaustion and something close to dread threatening to overwhelm me.

  She looked at me with her keen, too-knowing eyes, and said with a tone of vicious pride, ‘It’s a theory of mine. Knowledge – and the power it holds – has been transmitted through the annals of time in ancient, precious manuscripts. In books. In scrolls. In these fragile folios fashioned from the leaf and the bole of trees. Knowledge handed down from an Adept to an Apprentice in every religion.’

  I was well aware of this fact – the wisdom held in the most precious of earthly vessels; books – but I felt a growing heaviness in the pit of my stomach as Isabella continued unabated.

  ‘Each culture has its own sacred texts. The Bible. The Koran. The Torah. The Vedas. Look here. You understand my meaning. Each one seemingly different from the others – and yet they stem from the same source.
’

  ‘The Word,’ St. John whispered behind me as if compelled.

  ‘The Word. Yet, is the Word the parent of Knowledge? Or is Knowledge the parent of the Word? As I said earlier, the Word must be understood or its message is lost.’ Isabella paused to point a slender, fine-boned finger at the opened pages of the manuscript where a faint, iridescent gleam now escaped. Something shimmered and moved across its surface; the tree’s trunk twisted in an agony and ecstasy of hundreds of human faces and bodies, sinuous limbs intertwined like gnarled roots whilst, surrounding the tree, many more pairs of eyes greedily peered out from the Underworld in obeisance to the grotesque toad.

  ‘And what is its message? You cannot answer, can you? Yet you said it yourself, St. John – the source is the most hidden of all hidden things. And you, Sage – Knowledge from Life.’ She paused, her exquisite face suffused with the blush of nervous excitement. ‘Imagine possessing that source. Imagine possessing that Knowledge. Imagine Life and Death to be ideal bounds to be broken through, in order to learn the hidden laws of nature, to possess the tremendous secrets unfathomable to the human mind. What good one could do – imagine it – a better world.’

  With appalling clarity, I looked upon the beautiful, mercurial Isabella Donnatelli and recalled the words from the novel Finn had gifted to my sister in order to make her understand what it meant to be cursed like the Nephilim. But now Shelley’s cautionary tale held a more powerful warning of destruction through the hubristic ambitions of the tale’s true monster: “I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined ... You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.”

  AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL