The cook told me as he went about his business that he was honoured to have me share his table. Remarking with a generous air, ‘Es muí bueno! Good, good, sabes qué tengo debilidad por las órdenes militares . . . I very much like the military orders, very full of courage! Tenéis a petito? Hungry? Some fresh bread?’ He went into the larder and came out holding a great golden loaf that he placed before me, along with a cup of warmed wine that I drank almost immediately, and a generous slab of cheese.
The man smacked his lips, ‘Bendita Santa Divino!’ he said, looking at the bread. I dared not ask him why, I merely ate it, and soon realised that it was indeed divine.
‘The miel oh what honey! Is muy deliciosa ...!’ he sighed. ‘Our bees very much like the mountain, and this makes the honey light . . . sweet! Is like a good woman, yes?’ he laughed, winking hideously and reached up with one long arm to a shelf near the fire from whence he brought a substantial earthenware pot to the table. A disturbed rodent scurried down from its hiding place behind the honey and fled across the room. This sent the cook into an instant agitation.
‘Maldita mierda – Cursed dung!’ he exclaimed with great annoyance, giving it chase. But the furry thing was swift, escaping moments before he reached it through a tiny gap in the stone. The cook became enraged, aiming a volley of insults and curses at the bewildered assistant who, standing in the corner, cowered in the wake of his temper. In this mood he threw the knife in the general direction of the rat’s exit, and spat a perfunctory wad of saliva at the stone floor.
‘Cursed be the breast milk that thou hast suckled!’ he bellowed, and the windows shook. I believe he then remembered me because he gave me a lame smile. ‘Por favor . . . I beg your pardon . . . I am the dung of a donkey! But they are, after all, so tasty . . .’ He picked up the knife and wiped it thoroughly on his shirt before placing it in my hands, ‘Estúpido!’ he said, pointing to one of the cooks. ‘Idiota!’ he snarled at another.
I glanced at the soup bubbling with purposeful anxiety on the great fire and wondered about the rat. Seeing my concern, the man laughed. ‘It was not for our food – qué cosa buena, eh? Good, very good. No, no, it was for the cat, you see?’ He pointed to a spot above the fires where in a little alcove a honey-coloured feline slept unperturbed by the activity and the smoke. ‘Don Fernando.’
‘Why does he not catch it himself?’
‘Oh, not Don Fernando!’ said the other incredulously. ‘He is afraid of them, él tiene un humor muy delicado, he is delicate, and lazy also. So, you come with the inquisitor, eh?’
I nodded.
‘Ahh, Templar! I have not seen a Templar for many years.’
I flushed, swallowing down the bread with a good measure of wine. ‘I am not yet a knight. When I turn eighteen I shall truly enter the order, for now I am a squire and a scribe.’
‘Ahh ... you learn to be un medico – un doctor, like your master, eh?’
I said that I hoped so.
‘Very good! Un médico Templario! Muy bien! Good, bueno.’ He clapped. ‘Is good to be young, no? Is yours the world, yes? El mundo es sujo, sí ? I was once strong like you,’ he said with a grin, and then, like a man who has not had much occasion to indulge in conversation, he set about telling me his life’s story.
‘I travel much! Oh! What I have seen with these eyes!
But,’ he lowered his voice in a circumspect manner, ‘it does a cook no good to talk such things . . . no good with the inquisitor sniffing around eh? No . . . Creo en el poder del papacy sí,’ he emphasised, ‘I believe in the pope, the holy mother, la madre the church, el Papa, the mouth of God!’ He crossed himself and kissed the crucifix that dangled over his dirty habit.
At one point the refectorian rushed in. ‘Rodrigo, the bread!’ he cried, then in a hushed tone, ‘The brothers are seated.’ On seeing me, he nodded solicitously, ‘I will send the assistants in.’
The cook did not move. He seemed to become even more indolent. He exclaimed an ‘Arrgh!’ under his breath and, waving a hand, continued enlightening me on various recipes and preparations. At one point one of the assistant cooks asked about the wine to be served at the table.
‘Not from the larder, fool, ignorante!’ he shouted and the man cowered, ‘I have told you, is not to be touched that one, on the old brother’s orders.’
The monk glared at me, in a strange way frightened. ‘But, Rodrigo, the boy’s wine?’
Rodrigo frowned and took the empty glass from me, shaking his head, ‘Idiota! Only for the old ones!’ then to me. ‘It has powers for the health, poderes curativos, not for young ones, eh?’ he laughed then, but I had detected a little nervousness in his voice.
Presently, once this little misunderstanding had been clarified to his satisfaction, and the assistant suitably reprimanded and sent to the church to perform penance for his carelessness, the cook continued, telling me that in Sicily one could procure many foods from the Africas and surrounding areas. He intrigued me with stories of fruits so sweet no honey could be sweeter and bitter herbs the likes of which burn the mouth and purge the senses. He told me that in countries beyond the scope of maps, the natives grew peculiar foods of unequalled aroma and taste. Strange herbs, he said, and even stranger wines, numbed the head and made one lose one’s senses after just a glass, but even more intriguing were the strange concoctions that, when burnt over a slow fire and smoked, or even eaten as a paste, caused one to make communion with devils. I gasped as predicted and he laughed heartily.
‘What wonders . . .’ he told me in a husky voice, leaning his belly across the table. ‘Is your order brings such things in ships. Ahh, but you know, you have been in the Holy Land, no?’
I told him that Templar life was meagre and sparse on campaign.
‘Dios mío!’ he cried with emotion. ‘Your master matas moros, he kills the infidel?’
I nodded. He raised huge hands high in the air, grabbed me in my seat, pulled me to him – very nearly crushing my bones – and kissed me on both cheeks, ‘Deliver us from evil, libera nos a malo. Amen! I am your servant.’
I flushed, his foul breath lingering on my skin. ‘But you were speaking of something else . . .’
‘Eat, eat!’ he interrupted me, ‘I am your servant, I am your servant!’
So I did, not wishing to insult him. After a time, however, I began to feel sated and a little tired, so I leant back in my chair, patting my middle as I had seen the bishop and the others do the previous night. ‘You must have been highly favoured for your abilities. Did you work for a king or a duke, perhaps a wealthy merchant?’
He laughed a great guffaw that echoed loudly because he was a lay brother and therefore not so strictly bound by the rule on laughter. ‘Dukes? Kings? Niño! Boy, I say to you it was the great ruler of the empire!’ He then hesitated and his face became ashen.
‘Frederick?’ I sat up so abruptly that I almost fell off my seat.
‘O! My tongue is sinful!’ he said. ‘What I said . . . I did not mean . . . Frederick . . . I . . .’
‘You have worked in the kitchens of the excommunicated emperor! Tell me, I am intrigued.’
He looked at me with sharp eyes, ‘Are your lips wise, or are they as loose as a whore’s?’
‘They are wise, very wise,’ I said anxiously.
The man moved from his position opposite and sat down beside me at the table. He smelled of onions and garlic. ‘Frederico, he was un buen hombre! A good man, but you have heard the stories, no? A man with strong body and good brain, a hunter . . . a lover of women . . .’ he said in a low, wistful voice. ‘The emperor’s court! Qué maravilla! I was a craftsman in his kitchen! My dishes were the delights of infidels, the ecstasies of magicians, the enjoyments of astrologers, the pleasures of mathematicians. Poetas, troubadours, concubines! What women!’ He closed his eyes, seeing in some corner of his corrupted mind their superior form. ‘Delicious like pears, lush, with the flesh of pomegranates, rounded, brown like berries and sweet like . . . Yes, what would they do
with a little Templar like you, eh?’ He laughed again, seeing me turn a violent scarlet.
‘Why did you leave the emperor’s court?’ I changed the subject, putting an end, or so I hoped, to such talk.
‘Is my luck that is good the nose, eh?’ He tapped his large, veined nose, ‘It smells when a stew is cooked, yes, yes. Sicily it came to troubles, pestilence and I left. Frederico estaba muerto, dead, and his son Conrad . . . coward! No like his father, no like him! Then the other son Manfred . . .’ He lowered his voice, ‘An illegitimate! Un bastado from the wombs of a whore! A whelp of a she-wolf!’ He spat and smiled. ‘Con perdo ’n ... And now ... Dios mío the inquisitor has come, and we shall all be burned . . .’ He blessed himself. ‘Domini Canes – the Lord’s dog, not a man, a devil!’
‘Sir! You are speaking of a representative of the holy inquisition!’ I said indignantly.
‘Ahh, si, but you do not think that only heretics are – how you say? – inspired from the Devil eh? Eh?’ he pressed. ‘No! El inquisitor también – also! He does not look for monsters . . . he makes them! Big ugly ones! With my eyes I have seen them. Tiene miedo? Sí? Are you scared? You must be scared, tremble and beg like an animal, como un animal, and the holy mother will let you die before the flames eat your flesh!’ He began to howl like a wolf and I felt my stomach tighten into a knot and the food that I had so eagerly consumed became sour in my belly.
‘With my own eyes I have seen it!’ he asserted.
‘And how does a cook know so much?’ I asked.
‘From a kitchen I see everything, life and death. You must be discreto, but the truth should be spoken,’ he whispered, ‘I know this man, este hombre Rainiero Sacconi . . . un traitor to his people.’ He spat, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
‘A traitor?’
‘Well known is his history. You too must know it but I will tell you!’ He moved closer and I could smell his sour breath. ‘He was un Cathar, a heretic in Italia high in the Catharan Church. He taught la doctrina. Many inocentes followed him in believing that all laws were lies and laughing at las reglas, the rules of fasts and feasts . . . taking the consolamentum.’ The cook leant forward, both hands on the table. ‘Like the Devil in the garden, he seduced them.’
‘How did such a man become an inquisitor?’
‘How?’
At that moment two assistant cooks entered the kitchen, their eyes to the floor, cowls over their faces. One lifted a massive tray upon which an assortment of bread and cheeses was laid out. The other was handed an immense pot in which a vegetable broth had been cooking since the early hours. This the young monk placed, with some difficulty, on a wooden trolley. The cook handed him a ladle and shooed him out. ‘Out with you! Out all of you!’ he yelled, and as they scurried away, they reminded me of the rat.
He wiped both hands on his shirt, then gathering the folds of his vestments blew his nose loudly. ‘Aaah . . .sí ... sí, this herético ... sí, one day he was iluminado, saw his errors and was convertido! A miracle – un milagro – hágase el milagro y hágalo el diablo! ‘
I looked at him blankly.
‘Do not they say ‘if the work is good what matter who does it’, eh? Rainiero entered the Church in Milan and swore to hold the faith of the fathers, promising to obey el papa in the order of the dogs! Ole! That is the end.’
‘What do his former followers think of him?!’ I exclaimed.
‘They hate him! Is natural!’ he said shrugging his shoulders. ‘He mistreated his old amigos very much, very brutal since he replaced the old man Piero, Prior of Como . . . the martyr that was killed at the hands of the assassin Giacoppo della Chiusa. This man also tried to kill Rainiero at Pavia, but he was estúpido because he did not succeed . . . Rainiero is a clever man, listo e despierto! And now he is the pope’s dog, an inquisitor with a heretic up here.’ He tapped an index finger against a sweaty brow. ‘Innocent was clever too, better if the smart ones are on your side and not the enemies, even more because on Italian soil there is conflict, terrible, the church fights against the emperor, and the emperor against the church. Now he is here and I smell flesh burning in my nostrils . . . it is the smell of pig! Poohf! But I will speak no more. Those with loose tongues die in this abbey, those who know too much die also. I want to be ignorante,my young one, so that I may live a long and sinful life!’
I asked the cook for an apple, and left.
I wandered the grounds feeling a strange sensation, a kind of light-headedness. On seeking my master, I found him not in the dormitories, but in the scriptorium, leafing through a large book and having a most cordial discussion with the librarian, Brother Macabus, and a copyist whose present work (I would soon see) was filled with the most precious illuminations. I entered the enclosure of the scriptorium and made my way to them as quietly as possible, though a number of monks looked up from their work with barely concealed suspicion. Almost immediately, as if the sight of me caused them discomfort, they hung their heads over their shoulders and continued their work in silent rebuttal. But I took this rare opportunity to watch them discreetly, as they scraped away at an old palimpsest, or carefully marked the margins of a new one. Today I know this is how we have lost many a precious manuscript because a monk’s work is less about appropriating and perpetuating wisdom than perpetuating appropriate copying. As we are told a busy monk is only troubled by one devil, while an idle monk is troubled by many. This philosophy has sustained copyists and illuminators alike for centuries, as they proceed day by day to work unhurried, as though all eternity lay before them, erasing the works of the most orthodox and revered Christian fathers to make palimpsests of relatively little importance.
Once again obedience.
Still, I must confess to having envied them a little at that moment, if only because their life seemed a truly satisfying one. A life of constancy, devotion and fidelity. Where work is carried out for the sake of continuity and of permanence, and not – as overcomes so much of human endeavour – to satisfy the sin of pride. Here there was peace, and order, and the goodness of the word, which is God. And I remembered what the inquisitor had said on the day of our arrival at the abbey, magna est veritas, et praevalet, that is to say, great is truth and it prevails.
Shortly my master drew me to his side, I gave him his apple, and his eyes told me that he would perhaps have preferred a dumpling. Even so he bit into the apple eagerly, and between mouthfuls, proceeded to tell me that despite the unfortunate circumstances (by this he meant that he had found nothing in Brother Ezekiel’s room) he had passed a valuable morning looking through herbals and bestiaries provided by the librarian Brother Macabus. He then introduced me to the other monk, Brother Leonard, who was presently instructing him on the various inks and parchments used by him in his works.
‘The skins of young lambs . . .’ Leonard smiled, displaying prominent incisors, ‘is the preferred choice for works of great importance because it lasts so well. One may also re-use it many times because of its thickness. We also use vellum when we are graced to have some on hand, and rarely papyrus, for as you know, preceptor, it is brought from the lands of the infidel and is, of course, very rare.’
‘But where are your treasures, Brother Macabus, I do not see any bookcases?’ my master asked, taking another large bite of his apple, looking perplexed, though many times I had occasion to observe that he already knew the answers to his questions.
The man showed no hesitation in answering. ‘They are safely stored in the library, away from heat and humidity that
can be so damaging to old manuscripts.’
‘It must be a most comprehensive library, brother librarian.’
‘Yes, it is comprehensive,’ Macabus said, ‘though, by most standards, very small. Still it is our life work. Our most notable pieces are on the medicinal arts, and music.’
‘Ahh, then . . . I would very much like to see them.’
‘And your order is so often maligned for its illiteracy!’ he raised his chin in a suggestion of superi
ority. ‘It heartens me to think that erudition can complement a soldier’s life and yet I hear that you studied in Paris before joining the order, and Salerno also?’
‘Yes.’
‘How fortunate.’
‘I do not believe in fortune, brother, only in tenacity. May I have your permission to visit the library?’
‘Impossible! For that you shall require the abbot’s permission, preceptor,’ the librarian answered with the slightest hint of bitterness, ‘there are not many who are given that privilege.’
‘Oh, I see . . . but where is the library situated, I have seen no building . . .?’
The monk looked a little embarrassed and Leonard interrupted, by means of changing the subject. ‘Have you been to the library at Bobbio, preceptor? Their catalogue is said to enumerate well over six hundred works. There is also St Gall. Have you heard that in Rhenish monasteries they are now using woodcuts?’ Straightening his back proudly he said, ‘I have seen one or two works of supreme excellence, but here we prefer the traditional use of stylus, reed, or quill, with inks and pigments unsurpassed in luminescence.’
My master was thoughtful for a moment, ‘Yes . . . so you translate many Greek texts?’
‘How did you know?’ Macabus asked, a little amazed.
‘When you said that your most notable works were on the medicinal arts, I assumed you meant the works of Hippocrates, and Galen.’
‘You are correct,’ the man said smugly. ‘We have had, and do have, I believe, the finest translators in Europe.’
‘Really?’ my master nodded, very pleased.
‘Oh, yes, indeed.’
‘And who might be your most notable?’
‘That would be Anselmo,’ Leonard answered and was immediately sorry, for a dark cloud moved over his superior’s brow.
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