Temple of the Grail(106)

I resolved not to tax my mind with unnecessary thoughts. If nothing else, these last days had taught me to be economical with my emotions, for I was sure to need them in ample measure in the not-too-distant future. Instead I decided to delight in the quietude and peace of familiar smells; well-oiled leather and animals, dung, and hay. I would forget the tunnels, and the Cathars, the girl in my dream, the bees.

I entered the cubicle in which Gilgamesh resided, and from his saddle found the brush with the ivory head that my master had procured in the East. I brushed his fine muscular body with long strokes, making comforting noises that seemed to soothe him. Looking out beyond the abbey, through a small aperture in his cubicle I could see a faint dullness over the eastern mountains. The daystar would not be discerned today, there would be thick grey clouds above. Below, a fierce wind, and a brilliant whiteness. Everything moved in time to the impetuous weather. There was, however, no smoke from a fire that I had come to expect, below the abbey.

Suddenly from behind me I heard a voice.

‘Be ye not like unto horse and mule, which have no understanding; whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall upon thee.’ I jumped, and a gasp escaped my lips. Gilgamesh twitched in alarm, sensing my fear.

My terrified eyes located Setubar sitting low on a chair to the far right of the stalls, his angular frame drowned by his voluminous habit, his eyes wrinkled and wickedly intelligent. He nodded, lifting his long tapered hands to beckon me to him. ‘Come, come, my beautiful boy . . . Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me?’ He laughed a little, ‘Have you put thy trust in God? Oh, the young never trust God,’ he answered himself, waving a pale hand in the air. ‘They trust only in their youth! But youth is fleeting . . . You see me? I was once red-blooded and sinewy, like you.’

I stood motionless, not knowing what to do.

‘I see you love your horse, after all he is beautiful and strong,’ he continued, ‘but he is a creature of pleasure and all pleasure is rooted in evil . . . The mule is unpleasant to behold, and though he is stubborn, he is loyal. The mule is a creature of service.’ He nodded his head, and a faint trickle of saliva escaped his mouth.

‘Yes, venerable brother,’ I answered, very frightened, ‘but he is not my horse, he is my master’s.’

‘Ahhhh,’ the old man hissed, ‘so it is that you covet your master’s horse?’

I felt a cold sweat snaking its way down my back and I shuddered. This man seemed to be the Devil himself. ‘I confess to having a fondness for him, master.’ I trembled.

‘Oh, a fondness! Yes, when one is young one is fond of everything. Everything is new and wondrous, but as one grows older those very things that one thought wondrous cause us the greatest anguish, for as Ecclesiastes tells us, ‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’’ He leant forward and waved me over to him. ‘Come, tell me what gives your youthful face that pallor . . . I am old and my teeth are nearly all gone . . . I will not bite you!’

Oh, dear God, how I feared that man! Yet I knew that my desire to know the truth should outweigh all other considerations. It was my duty, I told myself, as a soldier of Christ, or very nearly so, to get close enough to the old man to see if his shoes were stained with blood or clay. Determined, I made my way out of the stall, walking timidly what seemed an eternal distance between us. I could see his grey eyes, sparkling malevolently beneath his cowl, drawing me with their intensity. What else could I do but follow his wish? Should I kneel at his side? I wondered. No! I thought in sudden terror. Once I was within reach he would caress me with his cold fingers, as was the custom of older men, what if I should flinch? He would suspect that I knew the truth! I bit my lip. I was no coward, this was my opportunity to find out if he was indeed the cunning murderer. He was not physically strong and so, easily overpowered, and yet, I realised, placing one foot ahead of the other, his victims had not overpowered him! But they were old, ahh . . . but what of young Jerome?

The door to the stables creaked open for a moment allowing a cold gust to invade the relative warmth, then it banged shut with such force that I gasped, jumping out of my skin, as they say. Indeed, it must have been a comical sight, for it occasioned a chuckle from the old man.

‘Come, come . . . You think I am a wicked old man, don’t you?’ he asked.

How could he know? I resolved that he must be a sorcerer, in league with the Devil, how else could he know my every thought? It is only now, after much reflection, that I know Setubar’s power not to have been diabolical, it lay rather in observation, the quiet skill of every good physician. His was a strength born of many years studying faces, hands, gestures, inflections, tones, to arrive at a diagnosis of the state of a man’s inner as well as outer being. But it also vested him with the ability to penetrate the soul and wrench from it every human desire, thought, passion. In this respect he was indeed formidable.