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
Myself, abandoning the true and straight.
William watched Nadja, who stared into the campfire, listening to the poet’s incantation. During their long trek down from Munich, William had taught Nadja all the Italian he knew. Enough for the marketplace, perhaps, but insufficient for the subtle inventions of Dante Alighieri. Giovanni was raised on Dante; the Tuscan dialect was both his mother tongue and his art. In the two weeks since Giovanni had joined their pilgrimage, Nadja’s Italian had improved considerably.
The poet read of the meeting between Dante and the shade of Virgil, who was saying:
Therefore I think it best, and recommend,
That you should follow me. I’ll be your guide
And lead you through eternal dark, to wend
Where you will hear despairing shrieks: inside,
Where all the ancient and tormented souls
Bewail the second death, the burning tide.
We’re close to the gate, thought William. A few more days to darkness.
If they could find the gate. If it existed at all. The friar had his doubts. His only guides to the abyss were Dante’s Inferno and Nadja’s visions: the testimony of a dead man and the dreams of an epileptic. These did little to bolster William’s confidence. True, Nadja had led them to the wounded Templar, but the knight was already on the bourne of death. Perhaps they had arrived too late. Perhaps they should not have come at all.
Perhaps I should stop worrying so much.
William had spent a lifetime trying to reconcile faith to reason, but he understood now that reason and faith were not on speaking terms. This pilgrimage was an act of faith which reason could not warrant. For all his days of learning and discussion, for all his nights of quiet contemplation, he had become at last a superannuated fool, guided by a dead poet’s pen and a young girl’s delirium.
I will know the truth of it soon enough. The gate would be there, or it would not. Hell would open, or it would not.
Giovanni continued reciting the dialog between Dante and his spirit guide:
I said to him, “Poet, I beg of you,
By God, of whom you pagans do not know:
So I may flee this wood of darkest rue,
Please guide me down into the world below,
That I may come to see Saint Peter’s gate
And those who wallow in the fields of woe.”
He went. I followed him to meet my fate.
Giovanni closed the book. With his thumb he traced a cross on the cover and kissed it, then glanced at the wounded knight. “He may get there before you do.”
“He will live,” Nadja said. “God has plans for him.”
William saw blood seep through Marco’s bandage, a scarlet bloom that darkened as it dried. “He is a living miracle. That blow should have killed him.”
“And the man standing next to him,” Giovanni said, stuffing the book into his satchel. He withdrew a blanket from another bag and asked the question William had not dared to speak aloud. “What if your champion does not survive?”
“He will,” Nadja insisted.
William heard the wailing of the wolves on the battlefield, half a mile behind them. The pack had acquired a taste for human flesh. They were sated now but by tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, the corpses would be too far gone and the wolves would hunt again.
“We’ll keep moving south,” William said. “If Marco has not returned to himself by the time we reach the gate...well, I suppose we can make a final decision then.”
“We cannot descend without him,” Nadja said, in a voice devoid of doubt.
William crossed himself. “Then let us pray he makes it to the morning.”
CHAPTER 3
William woke before sunrise to find Nadja already risen. She sat on a stone by the ashes of the evening fire, a brown blanket wrapped around her legs, her hair tousled by sleep. In her lap was a piece of paper on a small wooden board. She held a charcoal stick, worn to a nub, and scratched it against the paper.
The friar sat up slowly and mumbled his morning prayers—twenty-four paternosters, by the Rule of Saint Francis. The air was cool on his face. The breeze coaxed him to his senses, and then to his feet. He stretched his limbs and took several deep breaths. His back was stiff from lying on the ground; his knees crackled like burning wood; his right leg tingled. Pacing about, he worked some life into the old joints. They had served him well for three score years and five. He hoped they still had a few good years in them. His exercises failed to arouse Nadja’s attention, so he said in a low voice, “Good morning.”
“Almost done,” she answered, eyes fixed on the drawing.
Marco da Roma was alive but unresponsive. His breathing was slow, shallow, regular. His pulse seemed weak but no worse than the night before. William checked the bandage, sniffing the wound for a hint of corruption, and left the dressing in place. Last night he had given up his only blanket for the wounded man and slept in nothing but his own tatterdemalion robe. Saint Francis would have given up the robe as well, but William was no saint and the evenings were chilly.
Giovanni, on the other hand, bundled himself in more clothes than the friar had ever owned. The poet continued wheezing softly, chanting the refrain of sleep.
After shuffling over to the little stream, William scooped cold water into his hands. He drank his fill before splashing some on his face and on the top of his tonsured head.
Returning to camp, he looked down at Nadja’s sketch. She limned a manticore in thick black lines: a man’s face, but the body of a lizard; lion’s paws, but the tail of a scorpion. It looked malignant, like something out of Dante, like some hideous creature born of the dark. Giovanni might recognize this demon from the cantos, but the friar did not wish to wake him yet.
“I saw this in a falling dream,” Nadja said.
William crouched down next to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not see you fall.”
There was little he could do for her dormition, except to be there when she came back to herself. Nadja’s epilepsy was beyond his powers to heal. For this he commended her to Christ, who had once healed an epileptic boy, a lunatic child who fell into fire. William told her the story often, explaining that if she had the faith of a mustard seed, she too would be healed. But William, who had contemplated scripture since before he could read, knew the true meaning of the text: Christ had chastised his disciples. They could not cast out the devils from the epileptic boy because they had so little faith. It was the disciples who needed faith, not the boy. It was William who needed faith, not the girl. He did not tell Nadja these things. He prayed for her and taught her to hope.
She waved his concern aside. “You were asleep,” she said, “and I was lying down already. No bruises this time.”
William smiled, waking his cheeks. “I’m glad to hear it.”
He rubbed the blur from his eyes and studied Nadja’s drawing with renewed interest, trying to make sense of it. In Munich, before Nadja’s trial, William had taught the girl to record her visions on paper. Those drawings had nearly gotten her killed. He blamed himself, but found consolation in the knowledge that her art might yet save them. Nadja had been sent by God to William. He needed to know why. If her visions came from God, as he believed, then William must see these visions for himself and divine their meaning. Her dreams were vivid, but the messages were seldom clear. “You saw this thing, this demon?”
She set aside her charcoal stick and blew the fine black dust from the page. “You will see him, too. In the dark place.”
The dark place. Nadja could scarcely bring herself to say it. William had urged her not to shrink from what she saw, not to hide difficult things behind easy words. He needed to know the truth of it. He needed her to acknowledge the dangers of their descent. The Inferno might prove a useful guide, but their path through Hell might not be Dante’s path. Nadja was gentle by nature, reluctant to trouble others, but kind words could get them killed. William needed to know the road ahead.
“What will happen when I meet this demon?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
The easy answer. He studied her face. The furrows in her brow said more than her voice. She stared down at the sketch, avoiding the friar’s gaze.
“Nadja? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
She shook her head.
“Say the thing you will not say.”
A wolf howled in the distance. Clouds scudded across the sun, throwing darkness upon the world.
“A message,” she whispered, soft as the wind.
“From this demon?”
She nodded.
“What did he tell you?”
“A name.”
“He gave you his name?”
“No,” she said. “He gave me yours.”
William felt a chill. He crossed his arms against the morning air. “Why?”
Nadja looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. “He is waiting for you.”
CHAPTER 4
Nadja sat in the two-wheeled cart as it rattled on the road, heading south through the low mountains of Campania, passing stands of holm oaks and service trees.
Next to her, Marco da Roma lay half-dead. He was longer than the little cart. His legs, bent at the knee, dangled over the back. Nadja held his cold, rough hands and prayed over him, whispering the Ave Maria. The words were in Latin, God’s language. She did not know what the words meant exactly, but she had heard them often enough, and had taught herself to say them. They were a comfort to her now.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus....”
She gazed down at Marco’s scarred, angular face. He had fallen forward on the battlefield, had been robbed of his clothes and armor, and had lain a day or more with his naked back and half his face exposed. Now, with the right side of his face sunburned, he looked like two men sewn together, one pale and the other red. The bandage, wrapped about his head like a linen casque, was stained with blood above his right ear. His head jounced and swayed as the wheels of the tumbrel bucked along the narrow dirt road, but Marco remained unconscious, his eyelids closed. He appeared to sleep, as if drowsed by a dwale, like in the children’s story of the knight and the princess, only now it was the knight who was ensorcelled by a spell, and Nadja was no princess. Her kiss would not save him, though if it could she would deny him nothing. Nadja knew his face better than her own, for she had seen it often in her falling dreams. She had sketched his features from memory, in charcoal on paper, but had done scant justice to his savage beauty.
As the sun crested the doddered trees, Nadja began to fret. Marco’s burns would soon worsen. He needed shade. She had an idea. If she could get the other blanket out from under him, it might serve as a canopy. Lifting his left arm to free a fold of the blanket, she discovered a stab wound in Marco’s side, just below his
armpit. Odd. The site of the wound, shielded by his upper arm, could not have been an easy target. If the blade had plunged deep it would surely have pierced his heart. Somehow, it had not. Another miracle. She thanked God and repeated her prayers, then held up the blanket to shadow the face of the fallen man.
The road was narrow and treacherous. In some places it ran to the edge of the drop, where one good bounce might send the tumbrel down the mountainside. Nadja preferred to walk, as she had done for most of the journey, trusting in her own two feet, but someone needed to watch over the wounded man. God, she trusted, would watch over her.
William and Giovanni ambled together ahead of the sumpter. The friar thumped his walking stick at a steady gait, poking at the road. A dotted line trailed behind him. Giovanni led the donkey, holding the reins in one hand, a long switch of hazel in the other. He glanced back to see what Nadja was doing with the blanket, then addressed the friar. “He’s too young, Father.”
“And strong,” the friar said, as if in agreement.
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“He’s too young.”
William fell silent for a dozen paces. The walking stick thumped along, punishing the earth. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’s the man in the picture.”
“That picture could have been a dozen soldiers on that field.”
Devil's Lair Page 2
