Authors: David Wisehart
Nadja returned from the
shadows with an armload of sticks and branches. She wore an olive-colored
kirtle over a white chemise, the colors dulled by the dust of the long road
behind her: some part of her homeland still clung to her skirts. Circling for a
better vantage to the fire, she fed the deadfall to the flames.
William felt her hand on his
shoulder as she stood behind him, leaning close. “He’ll live,” she said.
“I have my doubts.”
“But he has your prayers.”
Nadja sat down next to
Giovanni, her back to the fire, her knees tucked to her chest. She tugged her
skirt down to cover her legs, clutched her hands together at her ankles, and
placed her sharp chin on one knee, rocking slightly. Her blonde hair was wet
from the stream, her skin lambent in the firelight.
She was a peasant girl just
shy of twenty. Her head was uncoifed, for she had no husband. The falling
sickness kept her unmarried, despite her beauty and a soul that could only be
the work of a loving God. William had met her in Munich at the height of the
pestilence, and had saved her from the torches of an angry mob. A rash
decision, rescuing a woman accused of witchcraft, but he did not regret it. God
moved his heart, and he obeyed.
Nadja reminded him of
another girl, a chandler’s daughter in his home village of Ockham.
Evette.
The name still held power over him.
Evette was his first love, his first loss. She was the promise of a different
life, a better life, a life that had died to him more than forty years ago,
before he took his vows.
He purged the memories from
his mind to focus on the task at hand: bandaging the knight’s head wound with a
clean linen cloth.
Giovanni paid no attention
to Nadja, but kept his eyes on the leaves of his open book.
“Are you reading it?” she
asked.
The poet grunted an
affirmation.
“Your lips aren’t moving.”
She watched his lips intently.
“Not everyone mumbles when
they read,” he said.
“William does.” She glanced
over at the friar.
“Some people read without
talking,” said William. “Saint Ambrose was famous for it.”
“Giovanni is not a saint.”
The poet glared at her.
Undaunted, Nadja tilted her
head to inspect the cover. She reached over and tapped the title. “What does it
mean?”
Giovanni sighed, then
translated the title from ink to air: “
Inferno
of Dante Alighieri.”
He closed the book and
offered it to her. Nadja stared at the
Inferno
one moment, at Giovanni the next.
“Have a look,” he said.
William watched her pluck it
like forbidden fruit from Giovanni’s hand. Nadja held the book with reverence,
as if it were a relic. She passed her fingertips over the cracked leather
cover, which was scuffed and scored by years of reading and the abuses of hard
travel. She opened the book to peek inside, parting the foxed pages, turning
them delicately and without comprehension. The markings were a mystery.
The friar envied her
innocence, as he had once envied learning. Books had captivated William as a
young boy in Ockham: his parish priest had let him touch a Holy Bible, let him
turn the lambskin pages, let him study the pictures and the bright colored
letters. The tome, resting on a stand, had been too big and heavy for him to
lift. The priest picked him up so he could see the words. He was then six or
seven—a dozen years younger than Nadja was now. Had his eyes glowed like
hers when he touched his first book? Did her heart race now like his did then?
William possessed no books
of his own, save for the few he had committed memory—the Gospels, the
psalters, the works of the Philosopher—and time had begun to divest him
of those. Giovanni, untrammeled by vows of poverty or any hint of moderation,
traveled with seventeen books in his donkey cart. Most were familiar but a few,
like the
Metamorphoses
of Lucius Apuleius, were new to William. He felt blessed to share the road with
such a formidable library.
Giovanni said to the girl,
“I’ll read it to you, if you’d like,” meaning the
Inferno
, and he answered her smile with one of his own.
There was a hint of
seduction in that smile, William noted, and Nadja seemed to feel the force of
it. She brightened, then glanced away, as if dodging a sin. Giovanni had a
reputation as something of a rakehell. William was beginning to see why.
“Is it a romance?” Nadja
asked.
“A poem,” Giovanni said.
“I like poems.”
“This one will give you
nightmares. It’s a guide to the underworld.”
“Then yes,” she said, “I
think you should read it to us.” She returned the book to him. “We need a
guide.”
Giovanni glanced at the
friar. “You’ve read the
Inferno
?”
The questioned surprised
William. They had discussed this once already. Hadn’t they argued over Dante’s
Commedia
in that Roman tavern, the night they
first met? William was sure of it. He remembered Giovanni claiming that, despite
what the simple folk believed, Dante had never journeyed to the netherworld,
that his Hell was an artifice, his katabasis a fiction, like the descents of
Orpheus, Ulysses, and Aeneas. Now Giovanni seemed not to remember the debate.
Perhaps the poet had been too deep in his cups.
“I attended a reading at
Oxford,” William reminded him.
“I studied at Naples,”
Giovanni boasted. “This copy was a gift from Master Cino da Pistoia.”
William smiled at the name.
“Cino was a great poet.”
Giovanni opened the book
again. “He knew Dante personally.” His tone was envious. “Can you imagine?”
“I met him myself, you
know.”
“Master Cino?”
“Dante.”
Skepticism flickered across
Giovanni’s face, distorting it, giving him the twisted features of a gargoyle.
William chuckled.
“Where?” Giovanni asked. “In
Italy?”
“Merton College.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Oh?”
“Dante never went to
Oxford.”
“I assure you he did.”
Giovanni snapped the book
shut. “I don’t believe you.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
William rinsed the rag in
hot water, dipping and squeezing. Steam spiraled off his hands in pale flames
that infused the air with the smell of blood. He took his time, letting
Giovanni stew in his doubts.
Nadja gave the poet a
disappointed look. “When a priest tells you something, you should believe it.”
“I’m not a priest,” William
said.
“Of course you are,” said
Nadja. “Don’t be silly.”
William considered refuting
her logic, but then thought better of it.
Giovanni’s doubts erupted in
an question. “Oxford? How is that possible? I know everything about Dante. I’ve
read everything he wrote. I’ve been everywhere he went. I even know his
daughter, Sister Beatrice. She serves in the monastery of San Stefano. We
talked about her father. If Dante went to the islands, I would have heard about
it.”
“Now you have.”
The poet brandished the book
like a mummers prop. “He traveled, yes: Rome, Padua, Forlì, Verona, Lucca,
Ravenna—possibly even Paris. But
Oxford?
”
William shrugged. “You don’t
have to believe me.”
“You’re sure it was Dante?”
“I saw no reason to doubt
the man.”
“What did he look like?”
“He had a nose like a flying
buttress.”
Nadja laughed, but Giovanni
nodded.
“We had lots of visitors in
those days,” the friar said. “John of Reading came to Merton to read the
Sententiarum
. William of Alnwick gave a lecture.
Later, I taught with Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham and, well, anyway, at one
point we had a rather famous visitor from Italy. Dante Alighieri by name; an
exile by law; a genius by reputation. His
Vita Nuova
preceded him to England, and the reading
was well-attended.”
“He read from the
Commedia
?” Giovanni asked.
“I believe so, yes. In those
days I knew very little of Dante’s vernacular, so his poems were something of a
mystery, though the sounds were quite lovely in the ear.”
“You didn’t understand a
word?”
“A word here and there.
Afterwards we conversed in Latin.”
“You
talked
to him?”
William grinned. “For
several days, in fact. My friends and I gave him a tour of the library.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, let me think now. I
believe I asked him something about
Saint Patrick’s Purgatory.
Did he know the story?”
“By Marie de France.”
“We discussed some other
journeys to Heaven and Hell:
Tundale’s Vision
,
Saint Brendan’s Voyage
. He knew them all, of course. A very
learned man.”
The poet leaned forward.
“What book was he searching for, when you showed him the library?”
“Stories of King Arthur.”
“Arthur?”
“You mean romances?” Nadja
asked.
William nodded. “The knights
of the round table, the quest for the Holy Grail, and all of that.”
Giovanni flipped through the
Inferno
. “Dante
mentions Lancelot in the encounter with Paolo and Francesca. And then, where is
it?” He searched near the end of the book. “Yes, and Mordred. Dante saw Mordred
in the pit of Hell.”
William said, “He asked me
for the works of Walter Map.”
“Who’s that?” Giovanni
asked.
“Archdeacon of Oxford.
Before my time. Walter Map wrote one of the Grail romances. You may know it in
the French.”
“I’ve read Robert de Borron
and Chrétien de Troyes,” Giovanni said.
“They borrow extensively
from Map. He spent a lifetime researching the history of the Grail, and he
discovered some curious things.”
“Like what?” Nadja asked.
“The Holy Grail, the cup
that caught the blood of Christ, was carved from a precious stone.”
“Lucifer’s crown jewel,”
Giovanni said.
Nadja seemed surprised, and
a little dismayed. “The Grail belongs to Lucifer?”
“It did,”
said William. “It was bestowed on him in Heaven.”
“By sixty
thousand angels,” Giovanni said.
William
waited.
“Do you
want to tell it, or shall I?” he asked.
The poet
held his tongue, so William continued,
“God
granted Lucifer power over the Earth. Much of Lucifer’s power passed into the
stone. It was with this power that the Devil tempted Christ, though by that
time he had already lost the Grail.”
“How?” Nadja asked.
“Lucifer rebelled
against God. He refused to bow down to man. In the final battle of the War in
Heaven, Michael the Archangel struck the crown from Lucifer’s head—”
“The
stone broke free and fell to the earth,”
Giovanni
said. “It’s only a legend, Father. A tale from the pen of Wolfram von Eschenbach.”
“Borrowing, again, from Map.
Dante sought the original.”
“But why?” Nadja asked.
“Perhaps he knew the Devil
had found the Grail. Perhaps he saw the Grail itself in the Devil’s lair.”
Giovanni snorted and shook
his head.
Nadja asked him, “Are you
going to read it to me? The
Inferno
? You promised you would.”
“Yes,” William agreed,
“please do. Perhaps I’ll understand it better this time.”
Giovanni cleared his throat
and read aloud the first canto of Dante’s
Inferno
. He had a strong Tuscan voice, and knew
the poem like no one else alive.
Midway
along the journey of our life
I came to
myself in a darkling wood.
I’d lost
the straight and narrow. I was rife
With
terror. I would name it if I could,
That
savage sylvan wilderness. To dwell
On it
renews the fear, for there I stood
Alone,
lost in a bitter dell more fell
Than
death itself. Before I can relate
The good,
I have some other things to tell.
I cannot
say how I came to that fate,
For sleep
entangled me when I misled