by Gahan Hanmer
"Well, that was fun, Jack. I wonder if we couldn't get away with it inside the cloister."
"Now you're just being wicked."
She smiled. "Well, let's continue our walk. There really is something I want to show you."
The path ended in a grove of trees with some wooden benches in a semicircle. She took my hand and led me through the bushes just beyond. "Watch your step. It's steep here. Now, look!"
Not so far away, just on the near side of another river, was the loveliest castle anyone could have wanted to live happily ever after in. It was just a castle, not a palace; there was nothing ostentatious about it, and it was all of stone except for the drawbridge. Yet there the hand of that invisible designer had placed his signature. The castle was clearly the kingdom's centerpiece, its masterful work of art. And what the castle seemed to proclaim with every line and in every detail was that in this kingdom, this was where power and intelligence and beauty had finally come together to form a perfect bond.
It beckoned me. It invited me to come live there. I felt from the moment I saw it that my happiness on earth could never be quite complete until it could be my own castle. And the feeling was so strong, I was appalled by it. Not content with making love to Albert's queen, now I wanted his castle too.
"Jenna, who designed that castle?" When she didn't answer, I turned to look at her, and her eyes were moist with tears.
"He died of the flu three years ago. What a wonderful man he was!"
I felt a little jealous. Would she be crying for me if I had died of the flu three years ago? "Did he design the monastery too?"
"Oh, yes. He was a great genius."
"What was his name?"
"Joel. Joel Mason."
Joel Mason! One of America's most celebrated architects, his name practically a household word, he had vanished without a trace, leaving a scathing letter behind criticizing western civilization up one leg and down the other. A score of rumors had circulated around his disappearance, but the mystery had never been solved.
"He died here in the kingdom?"
"It was a great loss to us."
I couldn't ignore my sense that Joel had also been her lover. "He was an old man, wasn't he?"
"Oh, no! He was very mature, but he wasn't old. Not at all."
The drumming of hoofbeats on the road behind us was not entirely a welcome sound. Just since morning, I'd punched out the prince and made love to the queen; it occurred to me now that I'd never bothered to find out what the penalty was for high treason.
"That's Albert," Jenna said without any hint of anxiety. We looked each other over one last time for telltale grasses, and walked back toward the cloister.
Albert met us halfway. I was relieved to see him looking radiant and congenial. "Well, I suppose this means you've seen the castle, Jack. What a lovely view it is from the top of this hill! This is where I brought her ladyship to see it for the first time, isn't it, my dear? I'm sorry I missed the look on your face, Jack, but one can't be everywhere at once. So what do you think, Jack? Is there really a kingdom here, or was I making it all up?"
"Your majesty, I don't know what to say. It is a profound achievement, and I salute you." I gave him a deep bow.
Happiness bubbled out of him. Tears came to his eyes. "Thank you, Jack. A great deal of thought and planning and work went into it, and every time I come home, I'm amazed and delighted by it all over again. This time I'm home for good, thank God!"
"Dearest, I'm a little itchy from walking in the field," said Jenna, touching him lightly on the arm, "so I'm going to have a bath and get ready for dinner. I'm sure you and Sir Jack will have a thousand things to discuss." Off she went with perfect poise, smiling back at us as she turned the corner; she knew we wouldn't take our eyes off her until she was out of sight.
"Well, Jack, I saw Sir Leo and I must say he is very impressed with you. That's quite an accolade coming from Leo. I'd say you're doing pretty well for someone who's been here slightly more than twenty-four hours."
"Thank you, your majesty," I said, feeling somewhat relieved. "I like Sir Leo a great deal, and he's going to be a fine fencer when I get him loosened up."
"And then you rode over with Gordon, eh? What do you think of him?"
"I like him too. He's very deep. But I have to ask, what is this test that everybody took before they came here?"
"Not everybody took the test. Only the common people. The nobility didn't have to take it. I may have made a big mistake there. But it was very hard to find people for the nobility. That sounds funny, doesn't it, but it's true. They were all required to make quite a large financial investment, you see, and the test . . . well, it didn't seem appropriate at the time."
"What was the test about?"
"The test was developed to measure how deeply an individual was addicted to the modern world. I didn't want people here who would miss what the modern age had to offer and try to recreate it. I wanted people who yearned for the life that is available here."
"Okay, I get it. And who are the Picts?"
"Did you run into some Picts?"
"Gordon went charging into the woods after something he called a Pict. Whatever it was, I didn't see it. I wasn't sure if he was daffy or what."
"Oh, they're real enough!"
"What are they?"
"That's a very good question, Jack. What are they, indeed! They're one very good example of how easy it is to outsmart yourself."
"Gordon couldn't tell me much about them. He got himself all twisted around, and then gave up."
"I'm not sure I can do much better. All I can say is that they passed my test with flying colors. I transported them out of the modern era into the past, and when they got here they kept on going. But where it is they went to, I can't really say."
"So they're people who've turned wild?"
"Apparently I overdid it a little when I had that test developed. A percentage of the people who came here weren't interested in civilization at all, modern or otherwise."
"They took one look at the woods and off they went?"
"Not quite. It started with one man. A very unusual, very gifted man. A meditation master. He arrived at the invitation of the abbot. He was the first to go, and since then many others have joined him."
"How many?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe a hundred and fifty. Maybe not quite so many. How many of them are still alive, I have no idea."
"Women too?"
"Oh, yes! Whole families."
"Gordon seemed very pissed off at them."
"Some people want me to wipe them out or chase them away, as if I could really do either. They steal things sometimes, or so people say. Stealing is a very serious crime here, and if people kill Picts and say they caught them stealing, there isn't much I can say about that. But I'm not so sure it's the stealing. I think it just makes it that much harder to raise children and look after the womenfolk when the woods are full of wild men. Do you know what I mean?"
"The farmers fear them, so they want them dead?"
"Some do. Some are indifferent to them. Some are in awe of them."
"What about you, Sire?"
"I'm not going to tell you anything more. Here is an assignment for you. Once you have an experience with them—and you will—come and tell me what you think."
"Beg pardon, your majesty." A monk waving a wooden spoon was calling to us across the meadow. "If you're having supper with us this evening, we are about to sit down."
"We're coming, Brother Joseph! Well, Jack, are you hungry?"
I was very hungry, not having eaten since breakfast, and I was hoping as we walked in from the field that the monastery fare wouldn't be too abstemious. I was happy to discover that the monks liked to eat as much as they liked to cook.
Jenna and Albert and the abbot and I and several monks ate dinner in the monastery refectory. We had chicken in a delicious sauce, fresh potatoes and carrots and peas, bread right out of the oven, fruit wine, and custard pie. Leaning back in my
chair with a full belly, I felt very glad to be living in Albert's kingdom. I felt peaceful and satisfied in a way that was so new to me that I couldn't help wondering what exactly to attribute it to.
"What did you put in this food, Brother Robert?" I said to the cook. "It's made me high as a kite."
People looked at one another and smiled in a mischievous way that made me wonder if I'd set myself up for something.
"It's a very well-kept secret, Jack," Jenna teased me.
"You have to attain a very high level of sanctity before it can be revealed," said Albert. He looked pretty high himself, and I knew it couldn't be the wine, which was tasty but not potent.
"But since you're a friend of the king," said the abbot, "we'll make an exception."
"We don't put anything in it," said Brother Robert. There was an expectant pause. They were playing some kind of game with me. "But that's not the secret." There was another pause. They wanted me to say something or take a guess, but I couldn't think what to say.
"I give up," I said.
"The secret is what doesn't go into the food."
"Pesticides," I guessed.
They all looked at one another in a very stylized way that was obviously part of the game. "Pesti-what?" said Brother Joseph.
"Pesticides," I repeated.
"What a strange word," said Émile.
"The man's raving," said Albert. "Get the straightjacket."
"Straight-what?" said the abbot.
Something seemed to dawn on Albert, and he squirmed a bit. "Oh, come now!"
"Straight-what?" said the abbot. Everyone was smiling except Albert. I could tell he had lost some points, but I didn't quite get the rules of the game yet.
"Referees!" said the abbot.
"The abbot's correct," said Émile.
"I'm afraid so, dear," said Jenna.
"But surely there have always been straightjackets," said Albert, but he didn't seem convinced. He was just swimming against the tide.
"Madmen, yes; straightjackets, no," said the abbot. "The straightjacket was invented in the late eighteenth century, and was originally called a straight waistcoat."
"Oh, very well, I concede!" said Albert, pushing his sleeve up and extending his bare forearm to the abbot, who licked his first two fingers and gave Albert a stinging slap on the arm.
"Ouch!" said Albert, and everybody laughed.
"Pesti-what?" Brother Joseph said to me.
I understood now: modern words were forbidden. "I don't know what you mean," I side-stepped. "All I said was Bless the Child." And I tented my fingers together very piously.
"Nice try," said Brother Joseph, licking two fingers.
"Oh, very well, I concede!" I said, mimicking Albert's intonation perfectly, and that got a very good laugh. It was apparently all right to make fun of the king in that situation. God was the king in the monastery, and that gave Albert a little break.
I pulled back my sleeve and got my sting on the arm, and it made me feel merry and happy. It was part of my initiation. I was less of an outsider than I'd been when supper began.
The conversation moved on to local matters, local people, and local animals. I sat and listened, soaking up names and bits of lore. While I was listening, I wandered through that incredible kingdom with my imagination. People were having supper, putting the children to bed, generally wrapping it up for the day because it was getting too dark to work.
In another part of the world, people were flipping on the electric lights and getting set for the swing shift. Here, darkness was filling the valley with an inevitability that was quite thrilling. We weren't in some national park a few miles off the highway. We couldn't drive into town to see a movie, or go home to the suburbs where the television and the washing machine and the dishwasher were all ready and willing to work all night if we wanted them to.
No, the planet that contained the whole modern experience might just as well have been in some other solar system, it seemed that far away. And it seemed a queer place, like a funny old legend, not quite real anymore. A dreamy mist was already developing around my memories there. Even the pathos was gone from the story. It was just an ancient and rather obvious parable about how not to live.
Our life here borrowed nothing from that civilization, not a yard of synthetic cloth, not a tool or a trick, not one paper match. Yet nothing was missing. That in itself was a tremendous revelation, but it was only the beginning. Something that had very definitely been missing from my life was beginning to stir inside me.
How can I describe it? My skin felt like it was all one continuous cover and I could feel my body inside it. It wasn't as if I had one hand over there and one leg over there and my head somewhere up on a shelf, the way I was accustomed to feeling. I never used to be aware of my body unless something called my attention to it. Now I was aware of my whole body and the skin around it. It wasn't just an abstract skin. It was my living skin.
What was making such a profound difference in the way I felt? It was everything around me. The chair that I was sitting on, the clothes we were all wearing, every plank and peg in that whole monastery, every single thing in that entire river valley without exception had been handmade out of whatever was available from the valley itself by the people who lived here. There was nothing around me that came out of a chemical vat or was cranked out by machines and disaffected people who punched time cards and then drove home to watch TV.
I got up and walked slowly around the room; everything I touched seemed to touch me back and speak to me in some very personal way about the person who had made it. That was the genius of Albert's time machine, and somehow that was making me feel the way I felt.
Someone touched me on my shoulder and when I turned, there was Albert. "Yes, your majesty?"
"Nicely done, old boy," said Albert. "I knew you were a natural." And somehow I knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Does it show?" I said, amazed.
"I told you that you'd be in for a very pleasant surprise."
"But did you . . . I mean when you were planning all this, you couldn't possibly have known . . ."
"No, it was something we all discovered together over a period of time. In the very early days we still had a few artifacts from the modern age. We thought that would be all right because frankly we couldn't imagine how we would get along without them."
"Like clocks."
"Exactly! And when we finally realized that their presence was spoiling something very marvelous and powerful, something none of us had ever experienced before—well, into the big bonfire they went. From that point on, nothing was ever imported again."
"My skin feels different."
Albert laughed. "Oh yes, I know the feeling. Go take a walk out under the stars and see what that's like."
So I went back out into the meadow with my cloak wrapped tightly around me, and stood under the huge bowl of the night, all stippled with hundreds of thousands of little dots of light that were all huge, flaming suns a zillion miles away. The feeling swelled up inside me until I could hardly breathe except with great, gasping breaths. Then it subsided, percolating away with little bubbles of joy and power.
I didn't feel insignificant standing between dark mountains under the infinity of space. Rather I felt like it all belonged to me. I was part of it and it was part of me, the wind and the sky and the cold and the darkness. What was it that Gordon had said? It has to do with what a human being really is.
Just at that moment one of the brightest shooting stars I'd ever seen hurtled across the sky; as I turned to follow its path, I felt the breeze of something that whipped right past my face. Without thinking, I dropped down and ran crouching across the lawn until I reached the shelter of the arched doorway.
What the hell was that? Had someone taken a shot at me? It must have been a night bird or a hunting bat. Still, I had a funny feeling that wouldn't go away.
I thought about those two boys whose butts I'd kicked in the forest that afternoon. They ha
d no good reason to like me much after that incident. I recalled that Albert's son had attacked me with a sword in a hot-headed way, and had said he would kill me. But my intuition told me I had little to fear from those boys
Who else then? No one came to mind, and once again I told myself that it must have been some flying creature, nothing more; still, I decided I'd better go back inside. I passed Rudy Strapp in the hallway, and he paused to take a long look at me. "Something happen to you?"
"No, I don't think so. Something flew by my face in the dark. Probably a bat. It startled me."
He continued to watch me. "Let me give you a little tip. Don't take too many chances until you know this place better."
"Meaning what exactly?"
"Use your head. Don't be foolish. You're in a strange place. Doesn't that sound like good advice?" He continued down the hall, but I had a strong feeling there was more he could have told me. I put a smile on my face and went back to join the crowd.
"Sir Jack," said Albert, "we're all going to the chapel for a meditation before we turn in. Won't you join us?"
"I don't know how to meditate."
There was a ripple of laughter, but it was such a friendly-sounding laughter that I had to join in.
"That's no problem," said Albert. "We don't know how to do it either!" Everyone laughed even harder. "But it's something we're all trying very hard to learn." Several heads nodded agreement. "What is meditation anyway?" Albert went on. "You sit still and you try to put aside your restless thoughts. The intention is to have some kind of communion with the Divine. Is it easy? No, not so easy particularly in the beginning because all our restless habits oppose it. But what it can do for us is profound. It can make a continuous subtle improvement in every aspect of your life; and that's why we do it. Would you like to try?"
We filed into a small chapel with two windows looking out onto the darkness. I chose a seat far from both windows. The abbot gave a short prayer evoking the divine Presence and asking for assistance in our efforts. Then there was silence.
Much as I didn't want to disturb the others, I couldn't seem to get comfortable however I tried sitting, and I developed little itches everywhere that demanded attention. After about ten minutes of that torture, Albert said softly, "Jack, can you feel your heart beating in your chest?"
