Suddenly there was a great glow, a sudden shiver, a little earthquake shuddering beneath me, and she was my sister, my mother, my love, a dove . . . pure, undefiled. And the molten gold flowed from the aludel, prima materia – the original matter, flooded, unrestrained into the land, and . . .
The twelve became seven and the seven stars appeared.
AER
THE THIRD TRIAL
Easy is the way down to the Underworld: by night and by day dark Hades’ door stands open; but to retrace one’s steps and to take a way out to the upper air, that is the task, that is the labour.
Virgil Aeneid book 6, v. 1, line 126
17
Capitulum
I sat up with a jolt. Perspiration ran rivulets down my back and I was breathing heavily, my heart galloping like mad stallions. What had I done, I asked myself? I stood, and shamefully changed out of the habit that was soaked in my unchasteness, and dressed in the other garment the hospitaller had given me. Heavy of heart I then knelt, shivering from cold, fear and humiliation, and said one paternoster after another until I heard my master open my cell door.
Andre must have known something was amiss, though he said nothing, I only sensed that he was stealing an occasional glance in my direction. Perhaps he was working his peculiar logic on me?
We waited for Eisik, but he did not come, so we made our way to the church. I dived down into my cowl hoping to escape my master’s scrutiny, and I little noticed how cold it had become, or how the compound lay shrouded in a ghostly white blanket. I thought only of the dream, which, like an inner fire in my chest, God help me, warmed my being.
We entered the church through the north door and made our way cautiously past the Lady Chapel to the altar where we lit our two lamps at the great tripod and returned once again, by way of the ambulatory, to the north transept where, immersed in gloom, we waited.
‘By God’s bonnet,’ whispered my master harshly, ‘where is that confounded Jew?’
Time was passing and my master signalled that we should proceed to the Lady Chapel stealthily, in the shadows.
You must imagine, dear reader, the two of us crouched behind the curtains that adorned the walls, feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation. It was with such sentiments that I recited a paternoster once more, as my master made ready to open the panel. My heart was heavy, weighed down by a thousand weights. Brother Daniel’s admonition, ‘Beware the antichrist is near’, ran through my mind like a chant and I wondered if perhaps I had encountered the evil one in my dream, disguised as a woman, for I knew that he was skilful and ingenious. I remembered hearing discussions in lowered voices, among the young attendants and stablehands, they said that a man could become intoxicated with a woman, not only through her smell, which works like a potent magic, but also because of the colour of her lips, whose moisture and softness were like that of new wine that begged to be drunk with pleasure. A man, they said, was seduced by the slightest thing; the rise and fall of an ivory bosom, the milk and honey of a nape, the soft velvet of flesh . . . and by this infernal deception, induced to forget the holiest of vows to the mother church, to the order, and to God! Had I not been a witness to such things, even if only in a dream? I found I was breathing heavily, and my master gave me one of his odd looks. He, I knew, had always said that nature was the daughter of God and woman, as the daughter of nature, could be nothing less than divine. Now, as I looked on at the Virgin’s image in the chapel, I wondered how one could venerate her and not, at the same time, respect the same bond of femininity, that binds the mother with all women. Yet it was a woman, or the image of her (in some ways even more diabolical), that had induced me to sin. There was no denying it, and for this I felt a great guilt. I needed to confess everything to my master, my mouth even opened to say those terrible words, but as fate would have it just at that moment he depressed the two necromantic signs: first, Pisces, and then Saturn, and my mind was gratefully wrenched, if only for a brief time, from the sorrow of my guilt.
‘By the sword of Saladin!’ my master whispered harshly, ‘that’s not it!’
‘But master,’ I thought a moment, ‘you and Eisik were speaking of a celestial sequence ’
‘What did you say?’ Andre turned to me. ‘Of course! The sequence! Good boy, Christian!’ he whispered jubilantly. ‘You need to depress the sequence of planets with Saturn as the seventh, not Saturn alone!’
Andre tried to depress the sun sign but it would not move. ‘Why not?’ he whispered angrily. ‘For the love of all the saints, why did it move before and not now, by God?’
‘May the twelve become seven and the seven stars appear,’ I said, risking his rebuke.