Fifth Gospel(5)

There was a small fire in the hearth and only a meagre light from my candle and so when I looked up I saw only a shadow standing outside the threshold of the room. When the shadow stepped into the lighted space I realised that it was a young woman. As far as I could tell she had azure eyes, wide-set and shining beneath fine curving brows in a face that was moulded into a serious expression, as if she were a pure child, bruised by a cruel world. I dismissed this fancy and set down my quill and rubbed my eyes, for surely I had fallen asleep and was dreaming.

‘What is it, my child?’ I asked her.

‘I would speak with you, pairé,’ the dream answered, in a quiet voice, ‘if that is permissible to you.’

I gestured to a place near the fire and her eyes flickered past me to an ample bench. As she walked to it, I had a moment to observe her better.

She was small of frame but the slender neck carried her head well, and this gave her an air of nobility. Her hair was the colour of wheat and tumbled in curls from beneath a clean napkin, framing a face fine boned and fair. To look at her, this apparition seemed neither young nor old, like every woman and yet not a woman at all…Perhaps, I mused, she was a goddess trapped in the body of a woman, or an angel of mercy come to take me to my death! Whoever or whatever she was, she seemed to be touched by a recollection of the divine, by a memory of the soul before it fell to earth and entered into a corruptible body. And so, when her gaze returned to me, my old heart gave a leap.

Quite irrationally, I thought:

Here stands the very limits of blessedness!

Well, that was something new to me. How such an illogical thought had found its way into my dream I did not know, but I tried to dispel it by turning practical. I would treat the dream as if it were real and perhaps this would entice it to disclose its message.

‘Who are you, my child, the daughter of one of our perfects…or a believer?’

The shaking of her head was almost imperceptible but her eyes were steady, each perfectly matched in the spirit of a disconcerting purpose.

‘Who in this world can truly call themselves perfect, pairé? And what good is belief if one does not have eyes to see?’

These words confused me. My back was stiff and I rubbed it, my thin legs had gone all pins and needles, and my head, for its part, felt like a feather blown by the wind. By these incontrovertible signs I discerned that I was not asleep but very much awake and this made me full of vexation. For how could this girl think herself capable of speaking to a venerable bishop as if he were a simple minded man in need of instruction?

I cleared my throat. ‘If you do not trust in perfection,’ I said, sniffily, ‘nor set much store in belief, why have you come to speak with a perfect, a believer?’

‘To show you something…if you wish to see it.’

She waited with an exaggerated patience for me to say something in response, but I did not know what to say so I leant on the staff of procrastination. ‘Can it wait till morning, my dear? My head is light and I shall soon faint from exhaustion.’

‘Secrets are best shown in the night,’ she said, emphatically. ‘Both Orpheus and Virgil knew this.’

Secrets? Orpheus? Virgil?

I cleared my throat. ‘What sort of secrets do you mean my child?’

‘Have you heard, pairé, of such a thing as a Libro Secretum?’

I sighed. Secrets and books were nothing new. There were books locked away in the repositories of many monasteries, hidden from the eyes of the inquisition, such as those kept in our library; books that did not agree with the dogmas of the Catholics and so were deemed heretical. But what could such an elfin girl know about books in any case? Books were precious and not easy to come by, moreover they rarely fell into the hands of women, as few women could read.

‘Is your secret that you know this book exists?’ I said, peering at her.

‘No…there are many who know that it exists, though it remains unseen.’

‘But you said…didn’t you just say that you have seen it yourself?’

‘I see it always, pairé. In truth, anyone may see it.’

My faculties were bewildered. I changed my mind again – this was no woman, this was a dream apparition and a curious one at that!

‘If anyone can see this book, then it cannot be a secret,’ I pointed out quite logically, knowing that this would surely wake me up since logic had no place in dreams.

‘This reasoning is reserved for ordinary secrets,’ she said, with a polite smile, as if she had read my mind and would put it to rights. ‘But this is not an ordinary book which I shall show you. Reason cannot explain it, only philosophy.’