Knowledge of Angels

by Jill Paton Walsh

  To his consternation, tears sprang suddenly to Palinor’s eyes. ‘I have a wife at home,’ he said. ‘And a son whom I long to see again.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Severo. ‘I spoke only by way of analogy. I did not mean to make lewd suggestions to a chaste husband. You will be my guest; you shall have all you need. All that I require of you is that you should give Beneditx a fair hearing.’

  ‘I am always ready to listen to reason,’ said Palinor.

  ‘Rooms are ready for you in the Saracen’s House,’ said Severo. ‘And you will need a servant. I shall send Rafal to find you one.’

  The Saracen’s House was about two hours’ ride from Ciudad, in the foothills of the mountains. The house was at the head of a pleasant valley, full of tumbling streamlets from the great spring of fresh water which rose just below the house. It was cool there in summer, and the long-ago Saracen had made the kind of garden of which Saracens are inordinately fond – a courtyard garden with a basin of water in the middle. There was a farm, and several flourishing workshops in the cellars and the outbuildings. The house belonged to Severo, having been confiscated from its owner many years ago during an outbreak of fervour by the island Inquisition. All the property of heretics was forfeit. Severo never used it, its luxury being too much for him, though his predecessors in office had almost lived there. But it was a happy thought to send Palinor there, safely out of Ciudad. Keeping him in the cathedral cloister, which meant keeping the famous Beneditx there also, would cause tongues to wag, questions to be asked. Like many rulers, Severo strongly preferred secrecy, which he would have called discretion. Beneditx would rather have returned to the Galilea, taking Palinor with him, but Severo was afraid – or so he said – of the uproar that might erupt there if he put an atheist among the theological students. The estate servants at Alquiera, where the Saracen’s House was, were all peasants, given to accepting without curiosity the doings of their betters. Besides, the Galilea was two long days’ hard ride away, and Severo could not go there without attracting comment. If Palinor were at the Saracen’s House, he could be visited and talked to; Severo could keep a close eye on the progress of his conversion.

  When Beneditx protested that he needed his books at hand to undertake the argument, Severo sent him home to the Galilea for a few days to fetch them.

  ‘A manservant, or a maidservant, Holiness?’ enquired the indispensable Rafal.

  ‘It is of no consequence,’ said Severo. ‘Whichever is cheaper.’

  Rafal found a pair of striplings, boy and girl, standing hand in hand at the hiring block and offering the girl’s work at half price if they could work together. They were brother and sister, Joffre and Dolca, they said, and being orphans, having only each other in the world, they were loath to be parted. Rafal struck a bargain with them for a year and sent them to Alquiera to await Palinor.

  The Saracen’s House was a welcome refuge to Palinor, a great relief from the prison cells and dark rooms in which he had been confined for so long. It was built on the foundations of a great solid bastion, riddled with cellars and workshops, above which the apartments of the house were reared up high. The sound of water murmured all around it, his windows opened on to the tops of trees, and he could lean on his balcony over the drop and look at the white fury of a fierce little torrent at the foot of the wall. Whoever built the house had some idea of comfort and grace; the rooms were airy and light, the walls painted in unaffected patterns of flower and leaf; there were furnishings and linens on the beds. Palinor’s rooms opened on to a first-floor colonnade, which overlooked the courtyard on one side and the garden on the other.

  In this pleasant place he was free to wander, or to remain within. Both the close confinement he had endured and the lack of privacy were suddenly relieved. He had books – Severo had sent him Orosius’s History Against the Pagans, the Scriptures, several volumes of St Augustine, and a work of astronomy. He had clothes – Severo had sent him new-made shirts, doublets, hose, and a cloak of fine wool. Dolca brought hot water in the morning and washed his clothes for him; Joffre rode or walked with him when he took exercise. Palinor had no doubt of being still imprisoned; but he regained his health here, eating, walking and riding with zest. He awaited Beneditx with the kind of interest a chess player takes in the prospect of a worthy opponent.

  14

  Guillem had been gone seven days, seven days of misery at Sant Clara. Every sister was deep in remorse, though blameless. The abbess was mortified beyond bearing by the thought of having to tell the cardinal that they had failed in their duty, and in such a way as that! With hindsight it was easy to see that she should have hardened her heart against the hunt; healthy and well fed – grossly well fed – young men would not have come to any terrible harm from another night in the open, had she had the sense to turn them away.

  Josefa wept, appearing red-eyed in the chapel, choking on her tears, unable to sing the office, unable to sleep. She was consumed with fear for what might become of the snow-child.

  ‘She fended for herself before,’ said Sor Agnete, gently, trying to console Josefa, trying to quell the unworthy thought that tears are ugly on ugly faces.

  ‘But we disarmed her – we cut her claws,’ said Josefa.

  ‘We should face the fact that this may be a blessing in disguise,’ said Sor Agnete.

  ‘What do you mean, Sister? How, a blessing?’ asked Sor Blancha. It was the recreation hour, and the nuns were sitting quietly in the cloister garden, their little projects of lace-making and embroidery on their knees.

  ‘We are making so little progress,’ said Sor Agnete. ‘In so bitter a struggle with her . . .’

  ‘Be patient,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘How many years did the child spend with the wolf? She has spent a much smaller time with us as yet.’

  ‘I fear she may always be fit only for the wild,’ said Sor Agnete. ‘Suppose in the end we prevail upon her to wear clothes; then we must begin to bully and coerce her to eat like a Christian instead of like a dog; then . . .’

  ‘Patience. One thing at a time,’ said Sor Blancha. ‘She has the use of her hands – it is only that in everything she learned from the wolf she is wolf-like. She runs, she eats as a wolf taught her, but by and by she will learn from us things the wolf did not know. In the end, maybe, she will use her hands to eat.’

  ‘If ever we see her again,’ said Sor Juana. ‘But Josefa may be right, weeping her eyes out over there. I’ll warrant you can’t see to sew, Josefa. Perhaps the child will be unable to survive the wilderness without nails for claws. If she goes to her Maker, he will better know what to do with her than we do.’

  Sor Agnete was contemplating Josefa thoughtfully. It might indeed be for the best if the snow-child had gone for good. But the novice would be distraught. She must have an exceptionally tender heart.

  On the eighth day the hunters returned, their horses stepping down the rocky path quite early in the morning, their dogs all strung together on the leash. They had recaptured Amara; she was tied face down over the saddle of Guillem’s horse, while he came on foot, leading it by the bridle.

  The hunters were black-browed and grim-faced. They were dirty and tired. They dragged the dogs into the barn where they had been billeted before and shut them in. Then they sat about despondently, while Guillem lifted the child down from his saddle, in the gate.

  ‘Is she unharmed?’ said the abbess. She had begun her painful steps towards the gatehouse at the first sounds of their return. The child was curled into a ball and rigid in Guillem’s hands. Put down she stayed locked in her contracted spasm. Her teeth were grinding, and her eyes rolled in her head. Silently a flock of the sisters had arrived behind the abbess, silently looking on. Josefa ran forward, picked up the child, and carried her away, unbidden and unforbidden.

  ‘I must speak to you alone, lady,’ said Guillem.

  ‘I cannot speak alone with a layman,’ the abbess said.

  ‘This time you must,’ he said.

  Sor Agnete place
d a chair in the middle of the cloister garden, overlooked by every cell. Slowly the abbess made her way towards it, and painfully she sat down. Guillem stood before her, holding his hat, blinking into the sun.

  ‘Move into the shade, my son,’ she said, and he retreated under the canopy of shadow offered by the fig tree. He seemed unable to embark on his theme.

  ‘Now you have seen the child, your heart is troubled?’ she said at last. ‘Be consoled; it was not human cruelty, but the kindness of wolves . . .’

  ‘I am willing to kill it for you, Mother,’ he blurted out.

  She did not answer at once. Standing back at a respectful distance, he had not heard her indrawn breath.

  ‘It will be discreet, secret,’ he said. ‘We will simply say that we found her, but found her dead. The blow will be swift and painless. Her sufferings will be at an end.’

  ‘Kill her? But you speak of a human soul . . .’

  ‘It would be kinder; God will understand.’

  ‘It is absolutely against God’s law,’ she said, ‘and man’s law, also. You would be hanged. And rightly.’

  ‘I can trust my companions,’ he said. ‘I am willing to take what risk there is.’

  ‘Why? Why are you “willing”?’

  ‘If it were a dog of mine, or a horse of mine, or a wolf I had captured, or a thing I had hunted and brought to bay, I would have mercy on it,’ he said.

  ‘And this mercy, would it be mercy on the creature, or on the pain in your own soul inflicted by what you see? We are forbidden murder absolutely, even to relieve such horror as she arouses. Begone.’

  He stood his ground. A flush of colour spread over his face. He said hoarsely, ‘If you keep her, prepare to find that she is pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ cried the abbess. He did not answer. ‘She is only a child,’ she said. ‘It is not possible.’

  ‘I do not know about these things,’ he said, hanging his head. ‘But she may be old enough . . .’

  ‘Where did you find her?’ asked the abbess. ‘You must tell me.’

  ‘With the shepherds on the high pasture, many miles from here. Rough young men.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It is not fit to speak.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They said she had killed a lamb with her bare hands. They caught her. They had tied her over a ram’s back. They were using her . . .’ He spoke now in a muted whisper.

  The abbess rose to her feet. ‘God curse them!’ she cried. ‘By Holy Mary, the Divine Mother, by the blood of her son, Christ Jesus, by the Holy Catholic Church, by every saint in heaven, and every saint as yet unknown here on earth, by every prayer I have ever said, by all the merits earned by every nun at Sant Clara, past and present, I curse the men you speak of! May they be damned in the deepest pit of hell and share the sufferings of Lucifer!’

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘Take it back. You cannot blame them . . .’

  ‘Christ have mercy on me!’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a sin, of course,’ he said. ‘And a black one. They are rough men. But they spend months at a time up on the bare mountain, far from their womenfolk. They resort to their ewes for relief. What did you think would happen if a girl started running around up there among the flocks, showing her bottom?’

  The abbess swayed on her feet. She reached out blindly for the chair to support herself, and lost her balance. Seeing her faint, a dozen of her nuns came running and carried her within.

  Shortly, Sor Agnete came out to Guillem, standing defiantly under the fig tree. ‘She is recovering,’ said Sor Agnete. ‘She bids me tell you go in peace; she will pray for you.’

  Guillem put his hat on, and went.

  The abbey chaplain, Pare Aldonza, was very elderly. He was a humble man of modest capacities who had worked hard in a remote parish for many years, and whose position at Sant Clara had been given him to ease his last few years with some comfort and light labours. His was the care also of the scattered folk who farmed or fished in the few hamlets this side of the mountain. He was very agitated to be summoned to the abbess’s bed to find her in great distress, and uncertain health.

  ‘I have heard such a terrible thing,’ she told him, ‘as I can barely believe . . .’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, when he understood what she was asking, ‘it is common, Mother. The shepherds confess it, and do penance.’

  ‘What penance can you give for such a sin as that?’ she asked. She was deeply distressed.

  Pare Aldonza was nonplussed. He disliked being the bearer of harsh truths. But no nun, he knew, likes to find herself out of touch with the world, especially the dark side of it. They all flatter themselves that they have intimate knowledge of all they have renounced or sought shelter from. He decided on harshness.

  ‘I give them three days’ breaking stones and filling holes in the road, usually,’ he said. ‘How do you think the miles of track to Sant Clara are kept more or less in repair?’

  15

  ‘This may not be so difficult,’ said Beneditx. The two men were sitting at ease on the colonnade outside Palinor’s room, or between their rooms, rather, for on his return from the Galilea with a trunk of books Beneditx had settled himself into the rooms at the other end of the airy balcony. Joffre had set a table and chairs at the end of the space presently shaded from the sun, and Dolca had brought a jug of lemon juice and a basket of figs. Some time after she left them, her voice could be heard, mingling with the sound of tumbling water from below, where she knelt on a wet rock, washing Palinor’s shirt. She sang something wild and plangent, with a sweet high voice like a woodland bird.

  ‘There is an elegant short cut that might appeal to you,’ said Beneditx, eagerly opening his notes. ‘First you are to imagine God. You are to imagine, that is, a being possessed of every perfection. Can you do that?’

  ‘I am to imagine a being perfectly good, perfectly powerful, with perfect knowledge, and so on?’

  ‘Precisely. You are to imagine one than whom nothing more perfect can be conceived.’

  Palinor leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. His eyelids, which were thickly fringed with dark lashes, were the colour of a purple tarnish, darker than the hue of his countenance, as though he had been made of fine bronze, differentially weathered in light and air. ‘Done,’ he said.

  ‘But now,’ said Beneditx, ‘how could you assert that this being that you imagine does not exist? For a being in all particulars exactly like the one you have imagined, but existing, would be more perfect, and therefore would be greater than the non-existent one. But you were to imagine the most perfect being possible. To have understood the definition of God correctly is to understand that he must exist, by definition, in the same way as a man who has understood what a triangle is must know that it has three angles equal to one hundred and eighty degrees.’

  Palinor laughed. ‘I wish I had such power,’ he said, ‘as to call something into being simply by imagining it. Is this a serious proof?’

  Beneditx hesitated. Should he admit at once that St Thomas did not think this proof held water? No; why should he blunt one of his own barbs? ‘It was offered by St Anselm,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he was joking.’

  ‘Well,’ said Palinor, ‘suppose I imagined a perfect outcome to this escapade: a ship from Aclar, coming to rescue me. And suppose I told you that this ship must exist, because a real one is more perfect than an imaginary one, would you run down to the harbour in expectations of seeing it coming?’

  ‘I do not believe in Aclar,’ said Beneditx. ‘I asked everyone at the Galilea, and nobody had ever heard of it. There is no such place.’

  ‘What exists when I imagine your most perfect God, or a ship from Aclar,’ said Palinor, ‘is an idea of the thing in my mind. But an idea in my mind is not a ship in the harbour. It is madness to get confused about that. You have proved to me that I can imagine what you mean by God. But I never denied that God could be imagined; it is only too clear to me that he can be.’<
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  ‘Well, this proof is notoriously contentious,’ said Beneditx. ‘I have always rather liked it myself, but I will not pursue it. There are other ways to come at the matter.’

  ‘Before we leave the sophistical St Anselm,’ said Palinor, ‘can I point out to you that it is a very different thing to prove something to the satisfaction of somebody who has never doubted it and to find a proof that overcomes doubt? This proof that defines God into existence – you say you like it. But it was not this that convinced you, I think. You believed already when you first heard it.’

  ‘Yes I did,’ said Beneditx. ‘Everyone on Grandinsula believes in God.’

  ‘I can agree that anyone who knows what a triangle is knows a good deal about the angles it contains,’ Palinor continued. ‘But that is not to know that anything in the real world is actually a triangle.’

  ‘You should grant me, I think,’ said Beneditx, ‘some authority about belief, since I come from an island rich in faith, and you from a country where it is hard to find.’

  Palinor smiled at him. ‘I know more, perhaps, than you expect about ideas of God, since this sort of discussion is the delight of my circle of friends at home, and many of them believe in and worship God in some form or other; but it is whether these ideas correspond to anything in reality that is precisely the ground of our disagreement.’

  ‘You wouldn’t disagree if I said that there is such a thing as truth?’

  ‘No,’ said Palinor. ‘I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘That is self-evident,’ said Beneditx, his expression once more lit with eagerness. ‘For whoever denies the existence of truth asserts that truth does not exist. How, then, could such a one deny that the proposition “Truth does not exist” is true? But if there is anything true, there must be truth. God is truth itself. All discourse, therefore, all statements in all sciences, all refutations and disproofs contain the idea of God, because they contain the idea of truth. Even the notion of falsity contains the idea of truth. The existence of God is self-evident, everywhere assumed, even when men believe themselves to be talking of other things.’