Iacobus

by Matilde Asensi

  “Why are you interested in the monastery’s annals?”

  “It would take a long time to explain, prior, and I can assure you that there is no hidden malice in my request.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you with my question, frere,” he immediately replied, rather upset. “Of course you have my permission to look at the archives. I just wanted to talk to you for a while. You have been living with us for nearly two months and you haven’t made friends with any of the monks, not even with the abbot, who has made an effort to help you with everything he can. We know that other than our books nothing can interest you in a place like this, dedicated to learning and contemplation but we had hoped that you would tell us things about your travels and your life.”

  It’s always the same, I thought, alarmed. I mustn’t let my guard down or the Knights Hospitaller will end up like the Knights Templar.

  “Please forgive me, prior. My isolation has nothing to do with me being a Knight of St. John. I have always been this way and I don’t think that I can change now. But you are right, maybe I should open up more to the brothers. In fact, the nursing brother recently told me of the pueri oblati’s interest in me … Do you think that I could attend one of their breaks to talk to them?”

  “But frere … children have very vivid imaginations! Your adventures would only excite them and rob them of the sleep that they so need at their age. No, I’m sorry, I cannot authorize these visits. However …,” he added with thought, “I think that it would very good if some of the older pueri served you as your assistants and you could teach them some of the elements of your science so that in the future they can take charge of the hospital and the infirmary.”

  “That certainly is a good idea, prior …,” I agreed. “Would you let me choose or would you yourself appoint my assistant?”

  “Oh, there is no rush, no rush …! Speak to the nursing brother and choose the novicius that you think has the best skills.”

  After all, I told myself pleasantly surprised, that monk was not prior for nothing.

  That afternoon I walked to the library and pulled the chartae from the shelves of the archives corresponding to the Year of Our Lord 1303, the year of Jonas’s birth. On my lectorile, next to a beautiful copy of Comments on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liebana and Collectaneorum de re medica by Averroes, I unfolded a sea of documents relating to donations, work undertaken to construct barns, repopulation yields, improvements to the naves of the church, crops, deaths and births of servants, wills, purchases and sales and an endless amount of official tedious matters. Over the long days, I searched with infinitive patience until I found the information about children who had been abandoned at the monastery during that year. I was glad that I didn’t know the Christian name that the monks had given Jonas – because in the end there were three children to investigate –, so no prior preference would cloud my reading.

  Luckily, one of the babies stood out straight away. On the morning of the 12th of June the operarius brother who went out to repair the broken blades of a mill found a newborn at the door in a basket, wrapped in rich fabrics without any markings or embroidery. Hanging from the child’s neck was a small, black, jet charm set in silver in the shape of a fish — which worried the monks in case he was of Jewish descent —, and hidden amongst the diapers was an unsigned note requesting that the infant be gracefully baptized with the name Garcia. I didn’t look any further; I had all the proof I needed. Now I just needed to check whether the Garcia in the documents was the Jonas from the infirmary so as soon as I could I headed for the house of the pueri oblati to select my future apprentice. But why wait? mocked destiny, and before I’d even walked through the door, a shout suddenly answered all of my questions:

  “Garciaaaaaaaaa!”

  And Garcia shot past me, running like he did when he escaped from the infirmary with his habit gathered in bunches so as not to get in the way of his legs.

  And then it was Christmas again, and this year we were celebrating the holidays with the sad news of the death of the abbot of Ponç de Riba. I had made an effort, without much success, to alleviate the pain of his last days with large doses of opium but it had not done much good. When I palpated his stomach, which was swollen like that of a woman in labor and just as hard, I knew there was no hope for him. To ease his mind I suggested removing the malignant tumor but he flatly refused and amidst great suffering he gave his soul to God during the Epiphany of 1317. The dreadful noise of the ratchet could be heard throughout the grounds for the next three days, making the community’s mourning even more overwhelming.

  The funerals lasted for several months and were very ostentatious and filled with pageantry. They were attended by the prelates from the sister abbeys of France, England and Italy and at last, at the end of April, the whole community locked itself in and the chapter began — led by the abbot from the mother house, the French monastery of Bellicourt —, to chose a new Abba from amongst its members. The deliberations continued day after day, with the few of us who were left outside having no information about what was happening inside, although at the end of the first week we had got used to the situation and were even enjoying ourselves, as the presence of the abbot of Bellicourt helped to improve the quality and quantity of the food: On meat days, the cook brother gave us rations of up to three quarters more beef, mutton or lamb, depending on what there was, and as we were nearing summer, the food was accompanied by parsley or blueberry sauce; Wednesdays and Saturdays was stew, and the daily amount of bread increased by an average of a whole pound per person.

  We were already into the third week of the chapter when, on a warm morning where silence reigned throughout, the novicius from the lantern vigorously rang the bell announcing the arrival of visitors. The sub-prior left the funeral to see to the newcomers and the cellarer pulled several servants from the garden to whom he entrusted the service and hospitality duties in the absence of the monks.

  Jonas and I were working at the forge, filing delicate surgical instruments which, with great sacrifice and ineptitude, we had made to resemble the ones displayed on the pages of the master Albucasis. That task required enormous concentration because in the absence of the blacksmith monk the alloys and forging left much to be desired and the instruments broke in our hands like clay figurines. We were so concentrated on what we were doing that we didn’t go to greet the travelers which would have been the correct thing to do. They, meanwhile, took no time at all to make an appearance at the forge.

  “Knight Galceran of Born!” shouted a familiar voice. “How dare you wear that dirty blacksmith’s apron in the presence of other frates milites from your Order!”

  “Joanot of Tahull! Gerard!” I exclaimed, quickly lifting my head.

  “You will be severely punished by the Provincial Master!” bellowed my brother Joanot, giving me a big hug; the noise of the steel from his chain mail and the sheath of his sword knocking on his greaves abruptly awoke me from a long sleep.

  “Freires!” I stammered, still amazed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your holiday is over, freire, you have to go back to work,” laughed Gerard, also hugging me.

  “We have come to get you, so you don’t continue getting old and fat with this easy life of a convent monk.”

  I sat down heavily, overwhelmed, on one of the benches and looked at my brothers who were full of enthusiasm. There they were, in front of me, the most dignified and honored Hospitaller Knights in the Christian world, with their black cloaks, their long beards hanging over their ventails and their blessed swords at their hips. We had fought so many battles together, traveled so many roads to near death, studied, trained and served for so many hours! I hadn’t even realized up until then just how much I missed them, how much I yearned to go home …

  “O.K.,” I said, standing up, “let’s go. I have learned everything I can here!”

  “Stop right there! Where do you think you’re going?” My brother Gerard stopped me in my tracks, resting his chain mail
glove on my chest.

  “Did you not say that I must return?”

  “But not to Rhodes, brother. You’re not going home yet.”

  I assume that I must have had a stupid look on my face.

  “Oh, no, not that!” warned Joanot. “I swear, I cannot stand to see tears in the eyes of a Knight Hospitaller!”

  “Don’t be silly, freire. The tears will be in your dirty eyes as soon as I recover my sword … and as soon as I recover the strength to wield it, of course.”

  “Well said, brother, because you look like a ….”

  “Quiet, both of you!” yelled Gerard. “And you, Joanot, give him the letters!”

  “The letters? What letters?”

  “Three very important letters, freire Galceran: one from the Seneschal of Rhodes himself, whose orders you remain under; another from the Grand Commander of the French Hospitallers, whose orders you will now follow; and lastly, a third from His Holiness Pope John XXII, whom the Almighty protects and who is to blame for this web of letters.”

  I could only murmur a sad ‘Good God!’ before falling in a heap on top of my poor surgical instruments.

  The letters were exhaustive. The one from the seneschal said that I must present myself before the Grand Commander of France before the end of May; the one from the Grand Commander of France said that I must present myself at the papal headquarters in Avignon before the 1st of June; and the one from His Holiness John XXII contained my appointment as papal legate with all the rights and honors that this represented especially, as explicitly stated, that of using the fastest horses that I myself would chose from the stables of any monastery, parish, or Christian house from Ponç de Riba to Avignon … Or what amounted to the same thing. Briefly summarizing, that I had to get to Avignon in under two weeks … Admirable.

  I personally took charge of settling my brothers into the cells in the pilgrim’s house, and then, with the afternoon drawing in, I locked myself in the church to meditate. It’s never a good idea to do things without having first anticipated all of the likely moves of the game, without having calculated all the possibilities — the most plausible, at least —, without having carefully thought about the gains and the losses, the eventual consequences and the repercussions on one’s life and on the life of those who depend on you … even if they don’t know it, as in the case of Jonas. That’s how I spent the rest of the evening and night, alone in the middle of the church, wrapping the white habit around myself for the last time, a habit I would leave behind as soon as the sun rose to definitively retrieve my own attire, the attire that would bring back the Galceran who disembarked in Barcelona seventeen months before.

  I prayed the morning prayers with the monks in the chapter house, and asked if the prior would meet with me for a moment in his cell to inform him of my hasty departure from the monastery. I would never have given him any details about the reasons for my departure had it not have been due to the fact that I was looking to obtain something much more valuable in return, and so I laid out the epistle from the Pope before him, leaving him speechless, and made him believe that I was sharing my worries with him, as if he were a friend, by confessing how unhappy this appointment made me and how upset I was about my departure from Ponç de Riba, especially now that he was going to be chosen as the Abbott.

  Before he could open his mouth, while he was still dazed and bewildered, I requested his permission to take Garcia, my novice, with me so as not to interrupt his preparation and I assured him that I would return him to the monastery without fail, matured and trained, ready to take his vows. I swore that the boy would always live in the closest Mauricense monastery to wherever I was based, and that he would perform all of the obligations and practices pertaining to his Order.

  Needless to say that I conscientiously committed perjury and everything I said was a pack of lies but I had to get the prior to give me custody of Jonas and take him away from the confines of those walls, to which, of course, he would never return.

  The retinue, formed by three Hospitaller knights, two squires, known as armigeri, also from the Hospital of St. John, a Mauricense novice about to turn fourteen, and two mules loaded with the baggage, left the convent at midday under a blazing sun and headed north towards Barcelona.

  CHAPTER II

  The constant fighting between the Roman families, Caetani and Colonna, had turned Rome into a bloody battlefield, forcing Pope Benedict XI to look for safety outside of Italy. In view of the situation of the Papal States at that time, his successor, Clement V, who held the office of Archbishop of Bordeaux after being elected by the conclave, had decided not to move to France until things in Rome had calmed down, thus beginning the period know as — although nobody quite knows why —, ‘The Babylonian captivity’. But things didn’t get any better, and John XXII, elected two years after the death of Clement — years during which the chair of St. Peter was empty for the first time in history —, decided to remain in his Episcopal palace in Avignon which thus became the center of Christianity. After two Frankish popes, who could tell whether or not the Papacy would one day return to Italy?

  However, what was clear in the second half of the month of April 1317, was that Jonas and I had to travel four hundred and seventy miles on horseback, crossing the risky passes of the Pyrenees, and time was not on our side. Nevertheless, we got held up for longer than we should have in Barcelona when we bid farewell to Joanot and Gerard, who were returning to Rhodes.

  Jonas and I, who didn’t have time to relax on our journey, quickly crossed Foix and Languedoc, stopping in Narbonne for a couple of days to rest and change the horses and mules. We almost always slept next to the road, on our cloaks, with the protection of a good fire, and although at first the boy complained slightly about the discomforts to which he was unaccustomed, he soon found the pleasure of sleeping under the stars, with his body lying directly on top of Mother Earth. I couldn’t explain to him how important it is to have contact with the arcane forces of life because he still had not been initiated but after a short time I could see how he came back to life, like a plant in spring, and the pale and drained novice from Ponç de Riba, who was now almost as tall as me, turned into the vigorous armiger to which every Hospitaller knight has the right.

  We crossed Beziers at a full gallop, and reached the Nemausus (2) of the Narbonese Gaul just a day after leaving Montpellier. Finally, late in the afternoon on the 31st of May, we entered the Papal territory know as Comtat Venaissin, strategically located between France, Germany and Italy, and at last our animals trod the magnificent Pont St. Benezet on the black Rhone before the sun disappeared behind us.

  The Bishop’s Castle, the soul of the world, was the first of the imposing buildings that we stumbled across upon crossing the walls of Avignon. We took a tired and curious look at it and continued with our exhausting ride, reining back sharply towards the Jewish quarters, behind which was the captaincy of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John.

  A servant opened the doors and took our horses while an armiger showed us in.

  “Where would you like your squire to lodge?” he asked without turning his head.

  “Take him with you, brother. He can sleep with the armigeri.”

  Jonas winced and looked offended.

  “I’m sorry, frere Galceran,” he said “but I cannot sleep in a Hospitaller house.”

  “Really?” I replied amused, walking down wide, long corridors covered with rich tapestries. “And where would you like to sleep?”

  “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to go to the nearest Mauricense convent. That’s what you promised the prior of my monastery and you have already broken your promise enough times during this trip, don’t you think?”

  His insolence had become as big as his body but it was preferable to put up with him like that than see him become a submissive monacus at Ponç de Riba.

  “Fine. Go. But tomorrow at first light I want you ready on the patio with the horses prepared.”

  The armiger cleared h
is throat. “Brother ….”

  “Speak.”

  “I’m sorry to have to inform your squire that there are no Mauricense communities in the city of Avignon.” He stopped in front of a beautifully carved door and grabbed the handles with both hands. We had arrived.

  “Very well, Jonas, listen,” I said, turning towards him exasperated. “You will follow the servant and you will sleep with the armigeri, and tomorrow morning you will wash your whole body with cold water, you will clean off the dirt from the journey and you will make that old Mauricense robe disappear from my sight. Now go.”

  The Grand Commander of France, the Prior of Avignon, and other prominent officials from my order were waiting for me in the hall. My appearance was not exactly the most suitable for a meeting of such a high level but they didn’t seem to pay much attention to the dirty habit, the bad smell and the several days worth of stubble. In fact, it was just a quick welcome and to update me on how my immediate meeting with the Pope would be. Only the Grand Commander of France, frey Robert of Arthus-Bertrand, Duke of Soyecourt and I would attend the meeting with the Pontiff and to my surprise, I was told that we would go dressed as Franciscans — with whom, by the way, His Holiness did not have a very good relationship due to the famous thesis about the poverty of Our Lord Jesus Christ —, and that we would walk there without letting anybody see us until we reached his private bedrooms, where he would await us at the hour of morning prayer.

  “At the hour of morning prayer!” I shouted in terror. “My Lord Robert, for the love of God, tell them to get my bath ready at once! I cannot be in the presence of His Holiness with this appearance. I would also like to eat something, if there’s time.”

  “Relax, brother, relax. Dinner is hot and there is a barber waiting for you behind that door. Do not worry, we still have three hours.”