Authors: David Wisehart
“The lancelight is strange,”
the poet said. “Not like a torch, or a lamp, or even the sun.”
“A miracle,” said Nadja.
William said, “The easy
answer.”
“You have another?”
“God gave us a mind and a
capacity to reason, so that we may better understand him.”
“Do you know how the Lance
gives light?” Giovanni asked.
“There are three kinds of
light,” said William. “Lux, lumen, and splendor. Lux is light in its pure form
at the source, such as the light of the sun. It shines on the earth and into
the earth to create minerals and engender plants.”
“No sunlight here,” Marco
observed.
“Which brings us to the
second form, lumen, a light that travels through something, like air or glass
or water. Lumen cannot penetrate stone, and thus we move through darkness.”
“And the third?” Giovanni
asked.
“Splendor. The light
reflected from a surface.”
“But first the lumen must
meet the surface,” Giovanni objected.
“Yes.”
“Without lux, there can be
no lumen, without lumen, there can be no splendor.”
“Very good.”
“Then what is the source of
the lancelight? Not the sun, surely.”
“Only one lumen can
penetrate Hell. It flows from the lux of God. The lancelight, then, is God’s
splendor.”
“In other words,” said
Nadja, “a miracle.”
“Precisely.”
The path leveled out into a
tunnel where the air was damp and smelled of rot. The pilgrims halted to rest.
Cries of anguish welled up
from the dark. Nadja heard sighs and wails and lamentations. The voices were
distant and spoke in many tongues. A woman pleaded in German, a man cursed in
Italian, a boy prayed in Latin, but the jumbled words conveyed nothing more
than pain and torment.
The pilgrims debouched from
the tunnel into a vast open cavern. Nadja peered into the tenebrous void.
“Are we in Hell?” asked
Marco.
“The antechamber,” Giovanni
answered. “We’ll find a river up ahead.”
Something wriggled at
Nadja’s feet. She stopped. Marco lowered the Lance to cast more light on the
ground, which was covered with blood, worms, and maggots.
“Keep going,” William told
her.
She tried to avoid stepping
on insects, but with each halting stride there were more vermin underfoot. The
ground became a writhing carpet of bugs, soft and moist and crunchy. Nadja
squirmed at each squishy step.
The screams chilled William
like ice water on his teeth. Naked shades ran through the arc of lancelight. A
thousand souls raced in circles, chasing a banner that eluded them. They were
stung by swarms of wasps and hornets. Blood flowed from the tortured shades and
fell to feed the worms and maggots.
Four figures broke from the
group and approached the pilgrims. They hesitated at the edge of the lancelight
and William saw that they had melted faces. When the friar stepped forward to
meet them, they withdrew into darkness. He stepped back again, and let them come
forward.
He asked, “Who are you?”
“Cowards,” Giovanni
whispered.
“Demons,” said Marco.
The spirits spoke in unison.
“Angels.”
“Fallen angels?” Nadja
asked.
The chorus answered, “Not
fallen. We took no side in the Rebellion.”
“But you’re in Hell.”
“No,” they said. “Neither
God nor the Devil will take us.”
“Then you are well and truly
damned,” said William.
“Why are you here?” the
angels asked. “Who do you seek?”
“We seek the Grail,” said
Nadja.
William asked, “Where can we
find it?”
“Beyond all sorrow.”
The phantom runners circled
again and the chorus of angels rejoined them, chasing the banner.
Nadja said, “They almost
look human.”
“They almost were,” said
Giovanni. “One was a pope.”
William was intrigued.
“Which one?”
“Celestine the Fifth.”
“He’s a saint,” the friar
protested.
Giovanni cupped his hands to
his mouth and shouted, “Celestine! Pope Celestine!”
One of the shades drew near.
He was naked as a bather, emaciated, and covered with bleeding sores. His skull
had a hole in it, the remnants of some mortal wound. He appeared human, but the
lancelight passed through him, casting no shadow.
“Do not call me that,” he
said.
William asked, “What should
we call you?”
“Pietro di Morrone. So I was
born, and so I died.”
“Why are you here?”
“‘
non resistere malo,
’” said Celestine, quoting Christ.
“‘
resistite autem diabolo
et fugiet a vobis,
’”
William countered, quoting James. “You fled the papacy. Now the Church is ruled
by heretics. You might have been another Gregory the Great. You might have
ushered in the third age.”
The shade said, “Many are
called, but few are willing. Isn’t that right, William of Ockham?”
“You know me?”
“You were called by the
Church, and ran.”
“I ran from her to save
her.”
“You said that of a woman
once.”
Evette.
The blow struck deep.
Pope Celestine said, “I was
tested and found wanting. You will be tested, Brother William. Where will you
be found?”
With that, the shade of
Celestine—pope and saint and eremite—withdrew once more into the
solitude of shadows.
The pilgrims rounded a
corner and saw a row of lights ahead: burning trees along a river.
The River Acheron,
Giovanni thought.
A throng of shades waited on
the riverbank for the ferryman who rowed toward them from across the water.
When the rower arrived Giovanni saw that he was an old man with a long white
beard and eyes like burning coal.
Charon.
“Wicked souls!” Charon
cried. “Hopeless sinners! Welcome to eternal darkness!” The ferryman turned to
Giovanni and his companions. “The living shall not pass.”
William stepped forward.
“You will ferry us across.”
“I do not ferry the living.
Come see me when you’re dead.”
“We were sent by God to meet
the Prince of Darkness. We bear the Holy Lance.”
Marco raised the Lance. The
light burned brighter.
Charon stared at it in
nervous wonder. “I was not warned.”
“I have warned you,” said
William.
The ferryman said, “You may
cross at your peril.”
Marco brandished the weapon
at the crowd. “Get back!”
The dead spirits shrank from
the lancelight. The pilgrims stepped into the ferryboat. As Charon pushed the
boat from the shore, a multitude of shades waded out into the river, grabbing
the wales and rocking the vessel. Giovanni could scarcely keep his balance. The
seething mob nearly whelmed the ferry but Marco stabbed the shades with the
Holy Lance and one by one they fell back screaming into the water. Charon
slashed at them with his oar, knocking dozens more into the drink. Pushing off
the faces of the damned, Charon drove the boat from danger, then rowed across
Acheron and saw the pilgrims to the other side.
CHAPTER 21
Beyond the shore they
entered a dark valley and wandered through a forest of human forms. The shades
were pale and insubstantial. Marco saw men and women holding hands. Children
gathered at their feet. Some of the figures shied from the lancelight, raising
a hand to shield their eyes, but the light passed through their phantom flesh
and left no shadows on their faces. They turned away and moved away and parted
as he approached. They moaned and whispered and looked afraid. When Marco tried
going right, the shades refused to yield. He brushed against one and felt a
chill. To avoid contact he drifted to the left, following the path of least
resistance.
They’re guiding me.
Nadja spoke in a tremulous
voice. “What is this place?”
“Limbo,” Giovanni said.
“These are the virtuous pagans.”
“And the unbaptized
children,” William added.
Marco noticed that the
shades were not watching him, but Nadja. Children pointed at the girl and
muttered. In the moans and sighs he heard her name repeated: “Nadja.” He saw
fear in Nadja’s face. They were calling to her. Guiding her.
Where?
Nadja clutched Marco’s arm. Together
they walked through the whispers of the damned.
Looking over the heads of
the children, Nadja saw a fire in the distance, a beacon on a hill.
“The citadel,” said
Giovanni. “Virgil is up there.”
“Would he help us?” Marco
asked.
“He helped Dante.”
The friar nodded his
consent, and the pilgrims changed course for the hill. They passed a verdant
field where Nadja saw more infants than adults. Some of the babies had a parent
beside them to hold their hands or tickle their tummies, but most lay
unattended. Infants wept in the grass, on their backs, with hands and feet
reaching through murky air for a mother or father who would never come.
In that confluence of cries, Nadja heard
the soft cooing of a single child. Her body trembled.
Baby.
She
let go of Marco’s arm and stepped into the grassy field.
Giovanni heard the purl of a
stream that circled the citadel, and with every step his vision of the walled
enclosure became more clear. Up there, he knew, were the great poets of
antiquity, Homer and Horace and Ovid and Lucan. Yes, and Virgil most of all.
His heart warmed with a lyric fire. He picked up the pace, walking ahead of the
lancelight, leading the way to the citadel and chanting as he went, “
Ultima
regna canam, fluvido contermina mundo, spiritibus quae lata patent, quae premia
solvunt pro meritis cuicunque suis...
”
They crossed over the little
stream and when they came to the gate it opened for them.
Giovanni saw two shades
arguing by a marble column. He asked the first one, “Where is Virgil?”
“Coming,” said the man, who
wore a Greek toga. “He knows you’re here.”
“Who are you?”
“Plato.” He indicated the
second shade, who paced back and forth with his hands behind him. “This is one
of my students—”
“I’ve read your
Timeaus,
” said William, catching up with the
group. “In translation.”
“Not my best work,” Plato
conceded.
“Your other works are lost.”
“No. They’re all here. Our
library is complete.”
Giovanni asked, “How is it
you speak Italian?”
“I am speaking my native
tongue,” Plato said.
Listening, Giovanni realized
it was true, yet it baffled him all the more. “I don’t know Greek. Only a few
words. Yet I understand you perfectly.”
He recalled that Dante, who
spoke no Greek, had understood the speech of Ulysses in Malebolge. Was Hell,
then, an inverse Tower of Babel where languages merged instead of sundered?
“Every language,” said
Plato, “is a corruption of the ideal language. I speak the corruption I knew in
life. What you hear is the eternal form.”
“Nonsense,” said the
student.
His master continued,
“Imagine we’re in a cave—”
“We
are
in a cave,” the other shot back.
“—and we see shadows
on the wall—”
“We are the shadows. The
formal and final cause.”
Plato said, “There is much
we cannot perceive directly.”
“We may be dead, but we’re
not insensate.”
“We cannot trust our senses.
For example, what are those screams we hear from below? If we were to step out
of the cave and into the light—”
Giovanni felt a pull at his arm.
He turned and saw Marco.
“Nadja’s missing,” said the
knight.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Out there
somewhere. We must go back.”
Giovanni nodded.
William, however, was
already walking off with the two shades, moving deeper into the citadel.
Giovanni called after him, “William!” but the friar did not respond. The poet
chased the old man down the hall and tugged at his sleeve.
Startled: “What?”
Giovanni said, “We have to
find Nadja.”
“Yes, yes. Very good. I’ll
be in the library.”