Knowledge of Angels

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘I am familiar with the origin and extent of your authority, Fra Murta. As to confusion about the present case, I am not surprised at it. I have proceeded with the greatest possible discretion in regard to the atheist, and in sworn secrecy over the child. My reasons are obvious to a man of your intelligence.’

  Fra Murta bowed. ‘I cannot wait to see this phenomenon of nature,’ he said. ‘How long since, Holiness, did you consign her to the care of the nuns of Sant Clara?’

  ‘It is now many months ago. Some progress has been made. I am not sure if it is yet enough.’

  ‘But shall we not go at once and see?’

  ‘I think I should warn the nuns that we intend to come; they may need to prepare her for a visitation of strangers. I will take you there in, shall we say, a fortnight? Meanwhile, the island is full of shrines that a man of your piety will no doubt wish to visit.’

  As soon as Fra Murta had left, Severo called Rafal. ‘Have that man watched,’ he said. ‘I want to know of every inch of ground on which he sets foot; I want to know just where he is day and night, and every person to whom he has spoken, even to give a good day. Discreetly, mind, and by no-one of clerical appearance. Go and hire me a couple of footpads.’

  Beneditx was praying. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear my prayer. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication . . .’

  When he had finished, he rose and went to find Palinor. He had one last dart to throw. Palinor was not in his chamber. Beneditx flinched slightly at finding himself with Dolca. The girl was heavy-lidded, and Beneditx, who had not noticed her at all at first, was suddenly finding her disturbing. He longed for the peace of the Galilea.

  ‘He is below,’ she said. ‘In the workshops.’

  Beneditx descended the stairs into the warren of coopers’ shops, weaving shops, potters’ shops, carpenters’ shops and suchlike, full of noisy workers, men and women, whose crafts produced the wealth of the Saracen’s House. Palinor was deep in conversation with the blacksmith, and showing him drawings. ‘Really?’ the man was saying. ‘Would it work?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Palinor. ‘Look, we put a wheel in the waterfall, and we take a drive off like this . . .’ He frowned slightly when he saw Beneditx, but he came at once, saying ‘Later’ to the smith. They ascended again to their airy colonnade.

  ‘What were you doing?’ asked Beneditx.

  ‘It would be possible to make the water drive a hammer for the smith. He would be relieved of a considerable part of the labour, and could use both hands to work the metal. I was discussing it with him.’

  Beneditx had never given one moment’s consideration to smithy work, and was nonplussed. ‘Is the work hard?’ he asked.

  ‘You have only to watch it, to see,’ said Palinor, sitting at the little rustic table and clapping his hands for Joffre. Joffre brought nuts and apricots and a jug of wine, and left them, padding silently away on bare feet.

  ‘You make out a good case for doubt,’ said Beneditx. ‘Before you came I would have thought that unbelievers were all frivolous – merely people who wished to be relieved of the duty to good conduct that belief imposes – but you have taught me otherwise. I see that doubt may be as deep, as serious, as belief. But there is a deficit in your arguments, just the same. It is one thing to be an unbeliever, to think that the proofs of God are not sufficient; but that would leave the matter in doubt. You would be maintaining simply that you did not know. How can you go further and say, “There is no God”? How can you defend a claim to negative certainty, which of all things is the hardest to prove?’

  Palinor was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘You are right, Beneditx, in saying that to claim to know for certain that there is no God would be a preposterous claim, so vast is the universe, so puny our understanding of it.’

  Briefly, hope and relief spiralled in Benedtix’s heart. ‘Will you answer to the name agnostic, then?’

  ‘No. Not in the sense you defined – that an agnostic is one who thinks that one day or if something happened he might be convinced. For I think that it is in principle impossible to know whether there is a God or not. I know therefore with immovable certainty that I shall never know that God exists. Likewise I shall never know that he does not. Such knowledge is always, and in principle, out of reach.’

  A sort of coldness ran in Beneditx’s veins. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

  ‘Have you seen the little fishes that swim in these clear streams?’ asked Palinor. ‘What do they know of the air? As they are immersed in water and can know only water, so are we immersed in space and time and can know only our universe. But your God is outside both space and time and beyond the universe. Perhaps, if he exists, there are dim reflections of him in the material world, as, for the fishes, there are green reaches of the water shaded by trees. But knowledge is a firmer, clearer thing, and for us not possible.’

  ‘But God has revealed himself to us, so that we do know him, though it be not by human means . . .’ Beneditx spoke urgently, but as if to himself.

  ‘No, my friend. For the difficulty in this knowing does not lie with God, but with us. It arises out of the very nature of the tools we have for thinking with, for knowing with. Our minds are sunk deep in the waters of space and time. Look, I will show you something, as you showed me the mosaic.’ Palinor clapped his hands for Joffre, and Joffre brought him a broken lantern, that had been hanging above the stair. Working delicately with his long dark fingers, Palinor extracted a pane of glass from one side of the lantern. It was a greenish gold colour, and full of little bubbles. Before he had freed it’ Joffre brought him also a handful of flowers.

  Palinor laid the flowers on the ground. Then he put a white blossom in his wine-cup on the table and said to Beneditx, ‘What colour is that?’

  ‘White,’ said Beneditx.

  Palinor held the glass in front of the cup. ‘What colour is it now?’ he asked.

  ‘It looks golden,’ said Beneditx, patiently, ‘but it is still white.’

  ‘You know that only because you saw it without the glass,’ said Palinor. ‘Close your eyes for a moment.’ While Beneditx closed his eyes, Palinor switched the flower, taking a different, large one from the bunch. He held the lantern pane in front of the flower, and said ‘You can look now. What colour is this one?’

  ‘White?’ said Beneditx.

  Lifting the glass away, Palinor showed him a golden flower. ‘Shut your eyes again,’ he said. This time, when Beneditx looked again, there were two flowers behind the pane. ‘Which of these is blue?’ asked Palinor.

  ‘The smaller one is darker,’ said Beneditx, unhappily. ‘So I expect it is that one.’

  ‘Alas!’ said Palinor. ‘The darker one is red. Now, what colour is the smaller one?’

  ‘Red,’ said Beneditx.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You told me yourself.’

  ‘But I might have been lying,’ said Palinor, laying down the pane. The smaller flower was blue. ‘To trust me and to know are not the same thing at all. You may believe your scriptures, Beneditx, and they may be true – but still you do not and you cannot know what lies outside space and time. You cannot, I cannot. Nobody can.’

  ‘And this is what you mean when you say that you are an atheist?’

  ‘Yes. It is not quite what you mean by the word, I know, but the only alternative you offered me was to name myself as one who could in principle be convinced, and I know that I am one who in principle cannot be. Further, I know that all those who say that they know that God exists are mistaken. They can know no such thing.’

  It was of his opponent that Beneditx thought first. ‘This might cost you your life, Palinor.’

  ‘But will you tell me to bend my conscience in order to save my life? If I am the fragment of dark glass that the great craftsman set to be a shadow in the picture, to be the obverse of a sparkle in his golden sky, why do you strive so to alter the pattern, to tilt me into the light? You ar
e a man of faith, but is faith more than doubt? Or is it also part of a whole, each part being necessary, but none more necessary than another?’

  25

  Severo found Fra Murta’s company unpalatable, and was relieved when the path narrowed as it began to ascend the pass to Sant Clara and they had to ride single file. Until then the friar had maintained a continuous stream of nauseating conversation, retailing the huge numbers of heretics who had been flushed out by various stratagems used by the brotherhood of itinerant inquisitors of which Fra Murta was one. Severo did not doubt the Church’s right, the Church’s duty, to crusade against heresy, where heresy was a problem; on Grandinsula any heretics kept their heads down, and he thought it best to leave them to their own damnation. But it was one thing to accept that there must be steps against heresy, and another to relish them. After listening for some miles to an animated account of how many had been ‘relaxed’ – that is, handed over to the secular powers for execution – and how many at the last minute had offered confessions and repented in exchange for being garrotted before being burned, Severo offered a rebuke.

  ‘The shedding of blood is a terrible thing, in any circumstances, Fra Murta.’

  ‘My name is Damaso, Holiness. And yes, of course, naturally. But the Church is innocent of the blood of these recalcitrants. The Holy Inquisition merely discovers heretics; they are handed over to the civil power to dispose of. Any blood guilt is on the hands of the civil power.’

  Severo reflected grimly that on Grandinsula the civil power in question was vested in him. ‘Fra Murta, has it ever happened in your extensive experience that a person accused of heresy has been found to be innocent?’

  ‘Once. The woman’s accusers all owed her money. We kept the names of the accusers strictly secret, of course. But when we asked her to name any enemies she had, she listed them all. We admonished her and released her. That was the only time I can recall. Of course, heresy accusations are nearly always denied vigorously at first. Later they are admitted.’

  The narrowing path brought relief to Severo. Instead of this distressing conversation and repeated invitations to call the man Damaso, he could ride ahead in blessed silence, hearing only the murmuring winds in the branches and the innocent birdsong, spurring his horse lightly whenever the clopping hooves of the horses behind him seemed to gain on him. He tried to calm himself. What the child said was in the hands of God, and God was merciful.

  He was welcomed with the usual semblance of joy at Sant Clara. A posy of wild flowers stood on the windowsill of his room in the guesthouse, overlooking the sea. A ewer of warm water was ready for him, and a jug of wine. He felt suddenly and irrationally ashamed – like someone who has unwittingly trodden in filth and brought it into a friend’s house on his shoes. The creature whom he had brought with him, who was even now settling into the room next to his, should have been kept away from this kindly house. Severo took a grip on himself and offered a silent apology to his God for such a twinge of loathing for a fellow churchman. He wondered what was happening to him; instead of the calm progress through life which he had been able to achieve these many years, he seemed to keep needing to rein in his feelings, turn himself round, calculate a new course, like an inexperienced navigator in stormy waters. He recited a psalm to himself before going across the garden to interrogate the snow-child.

  ‘Is this she?’ he asked. She was standing facing him and Fra Murta at the other end of the long refectory table. That ugly young novice stood just behind her, and the sisters were all ranged in the shadows, sitting along the walls of the room. He was staggered by the change in the child. In his mind’s eye he had expected the howling, scratching, raging creature he remembered. A thing that could not really be questioned, that bore witness in its every sound and movement that it knew neither God nor man. He had expected Fra Murta to be confronted with what Jaime had called blackness. But what he saw now was a slender, bone-thin child wearing a clean shift, standing straight. Her fingers were laced together, and she wove and wound them restlessly. Tendrils of dark curling hair hung round her narrow face and shaded her brow. She seemed – he was thunderstruck – a pleasing young girl. Then suddenly she worked her jaw convulsively, moving it in an exaggerated sideways slide, suddenly wolfish, an appearance which as rapidly disappeared. Watching her, Severo discovered that he had not expected his experiment to work, that he had been deceiving himself, and that he was terrified now of what she would say.

  ‘Amara,’ he said to her, ‘do you remember me?’

  She shot him a darting, piercing, discomforting glance from under her dark brows, her fringe of hair. He asked again, and she said, ‘Not know you. Not like him.’ She looked fleetingly at Fra Murta. Severo pressed his lips firmly together. He could not afford to smile.

  ‘Amara,’ he said, ‘do you remember living in the mountains?’

  ‘Snow there. Yes,’ she said. ‘I go there more. Soon.’

  ‘Who was with you in the mountain cave?’

  ‘Wolf. Young wolfs.’

  ‘Who did you then think created you, looked after you, as the nuns do now?’

  ‘Wolf.’

  He tried again. ‘Was there any spirit, anything all around you, unseen, but that you felt?’

  She scowled with an effort, it seemed to him, of thought. ‘Cold,’ she said.

  His relief was immense. She was not going to say anything to comfort Fra Murta.

  Fra Murta now joined in. ‘What was above you, in the mountains, my child?’ he asked.

  ‘I not your child,’ she said, scornfully.

  He tried again. ‘What was above you in the mountains, Amara?’

  ‘Sky,’ she said.

  ‘Was the sky empty? Could you feel something there that helped you, cared for you?’

  ‘Like wolf?’ she said. ‘Wolf in sky?’ She emitted her startling, barking laugh. ‘Nothing in sky.’

  ‘She does not understand us,’ said Fra Murta. ‘They have not taught her enough language. Teach her some more.’

  ‘Fra Murta,’ said Severo, standing abruptly. ‘You overreach yourself. It is not for you to command this sisterhood. Withdraw with me, and help me decide what is to be done.’

  As they left her he heard the soft voice of one of the nuns behind them, comforting the child. ‘It is all right, Amara. You answered well. You did well, child, we are proud of you . . .’ It was true, he thought. The poor creature had done well. To the immense question they had put to her she had given a clear answer. The answer was, ‘No.’

  26

  Sor Agnete, the abbess, and Sor Eulalie were in conference together. It was not exactly an official conference; that would have needed the whole sisterhood, everyone who had taken the final vows. But these three were old friends. They had been together so long. The world they had renounced had vanished behind them, and the years had flowed steadily in the unchanging channels of Sant Clara. The sisters who had admitted and instructed these three lay now in the little churchyard below the abbey. And Severo had left such dismay behind him that in their distress the three friends needed to talk together before uttering a syllable to the whole convocation.

  ‘What is to be done?’ asked the abbess.

  Sor Agnete looked out of the window into the cloister garden. There below her sat Amara, playing with her drum. Josefa, half visible sitting in the shade of a tree, was sewing expertly, with swift jerky movements of her needle. It had for some time now been possible to combine watching over Amara with other tasks. Amara did not beat her drum or tap a rhythm on it, though she had been shown over and over. She picked up a handful of tiny pebbles and cast them at it, making a meaningless rattle, a random sound like a burst of rain against a pane of glass or a little avalanche under a foot on a rocky surface. She seemed to like this inchoate sound.

  ‘We were too simple,’ said Sor Agnete. She was in the grip of moral anger. ‘I never imagined that the experiment we were asked to carry out was not genuine. Had the possibility crossed my mind that his Holiness
was not in good faith, I would have dismissed it. But now he has his answer, and he rejects it. We are to retain the child until he has a different one!’

  ‘He is wrestling with that other man,’ said the abbess. ‘And perhaps he does not realize, as Fra Murta certainly does, that the longer we keep her here the more certain it is that her answer will be contaminated.’

  ‘Contaminated?’ asked Sor Eulalie. ‘What do you mean, Mother?’

  ‘With knowledge. Contaminated with worldly knowledge of God. She lives amongst us; God is our everyday concern. Sooner or later, one of us will forget her vow, let a word slip, answer a question carelessly. Sooner or later, when nobody is looking, she will wander into the chapel . . .’

  ‘She is blessedly free from curiosity,’ said Sor Agnete.

  ‘But we thought we were doing a work of charity towards her that would come, by and by, to an end; that the cardinal would receive her back from us in a gentled state and find a place for her. And it seems to us now that we may be her prison keepers for ever.’ The abbess spoke quietly, as if thinking aloud.

  ‘She hates confinement. She likes neither our food nor our company. And how should these things seem good to one who cannot in the smallest degree understand or share our purposes?’ said Sor Eulalie.

  ‘Besides, there is Josefa,’ said Sor Agnete.