“Why, in that case I would have taken your money, played out my little dumbshow, and slipped away as above stated, to enjoy the ensuing jest in my imagination only. And now, by your kind leave…” The Italian started to stand.
The priest darted one arm forth to catch him by the sleeve. The state of this fellow’s handkerchief had not escaped his eye, nor the frayed and threadbare areas that pocked his faded garments, nor the fact that the fabric had never been of the best. “Stay a moment. Dine with me, at my expense. I may try to save your soul, but I will not report you, either to the secular authorities or the spiritual.”
The fellow hesitated no more than a heartbeat or two before laughing again and reseating himself. “I see I did not choose my mark too badly, after all. Enough such failures, and I could become a fat man.”
Not until near the end of their meal, when the Italian seemed sufficiently mellowed with food and wine that the priest judged him reasonably likely to speak truth in the matter, did Felipe ask his name and personal history.
“Francesco di Gubbio. A scamp in my native town, a sometimes successful—and sometimes not—rogue here in Rome.”
“By your leave, I shall call you Gubbio. Another San Francesco you are not. But have you considered, friend Gubbio, that your efforts might more often meet with success if they were directed in honest pursuits?”
“For another bottle of wine and a plateful of fruit and cheese, I will consider whatever you like.”
It was the only meal they were ever to eat as equals. Another bottle of wine and two plates of fruit later, Felipe had not only a benefice and a secretarial post with the bishop of Daroca awaiting him in Aragon, but his own personal manservant to accompany him there.
Chapter 6
The Dream of Hypatia
He stood on something slippery as ice, in the midst of swirling black fog. Somewhere, a woman’s voice was calling: “Grandson! Great-grandson!”
At length he discerned a brightening of the fog in the direction of her voice. Sliding his feet with extreme caution, he inched his way into the beam of light. Mist still clouded his vision, as though he swam through milk; but now, at least, he saw that the light had a source. He climbed toward that more than toward the voice, which he recognized and feared.
“Great-grandson!” she called one last time.
The fog fell away, and he found himself on the edge of a sort of raft of icy stuff, near the outer wall of some great building. The top of the wall was roughly even with his waist, but between his raft and the stonework was a deep chasm. His heretic ancestress waited at the edge of the stonework, extending her hand to him across the gulf.
He drew back.
“Will you drift?” she pleaded.
“How anchor myself to heresy?”
“Great-great-grandson! You are anchored in your priesthood, and your bishop has named you his Ordinary, to tie him with the Inquisition. Are you so loosely anchored in your own Faith that the mere touch of my hand might shake free your soul?”
The chasm was widening. His choice was to accept her help or drift back into darkness. Reluctantly, he stretched forth his arm.
She clasped it. There came a kind of soft, creeping shudder, and he stood beside her, his feet firm on the stone. Her touch was warm, human, and very gentle. Horrified in himself to find it so—should not a heretic’s touch burn the skin?—he pulled free of her and stepped back.
“Beware,” she cried sadly.
He saw that he had stepped too near the edge. One of his heels rested on empty air. Stepping forward again, though keeping his distance from her, he peered around.
The place where they stood was like a piazza overlooking a great seacoast city. Sunlight danced in large bright flakes on the blue water, and salt breezes blew the commonplace stenches of any great city away inland. Distant roaring, as of mobs or the sea, reached his ears; but up here all seemed peaceful.
On the other side of the piazza white smoke rose, swirling in the breeze, from a huge basin he guessed to be some roasting pit or giant incense burner. Indeed, the smell of incense teased his nostrils. Many people, most of them brown-robed monks, stood grouped about the basin. Several bent over their work at something that Don Felipe could not see. The rest chanted a strange chant, like none he had ever heard, but clearly meant for Christian rites.
He walked forward for a closer look.
One of the workers stood up, waving something above his head. It appeared to be a small white hand. He threw it into the basin. The smoke turned dark, and cheering interrupted the chant.
Now Felipe saw one tall monk, cowl pushed back upon his shoulders, standing at a pulpit raised above the burning pit.
“Bless you, my brothers!” this monk declaimed. “God blesses you, Christ and His great Mother Mary most holy bless you, for this holy work which you have done today in purifying our city of the Pagan philosopher and her baneful teaching!”
In a few steps, Felipe covered the remaining distance and gazed down between the workers. He beheld a woman’s body, naked, bruised, and covered with blood. Once, he guessed, she had been beautiful, but she must have been stoned to death. One eye was gone, the other stared up blindly at nothing. Even as he watched in stunned silence, a monk hacked off her other hand and rose to throw it after the first, into the fire.
Raymonde had come up at Felipe’s shoulder: he felt the brush of her inexplicable martyr’s palm.
“Hypatia of Alexandria,” she murmured. “By both your creed and mine in life, great-grandson, a Pagan steeped in false doctrine; yet great Christian churchmen—though not including the bishop Cyril and his toadying monks—called her friend, respected her learning, and had hopes of her wisdom. She deserves to be remembered for more than the manner of her death.”
Raymonde dropped her own martyr’s palm down upon Hypatia’s body. A monk pushed it unseeingly aside as he swung his axe into the dead woman’s elbow.
Don Felipe turned away, sickened, but as quickly turned back. “Is this fit work for monks?” he shouted at them. “The woman is dead! You have murdered her! She was unbaptized—you had no right to judge her—and yet you murdered her! At least return her body for burial!”
“And leave her soul to the good, merciful God,” Raymonde added, so softly that even Felipe heardly heard her.
The rest of them paid the two no attention whatever. Instead, they listened enrapt to their preacher, who was going on:
“Yet the greater part of your pious work remains to be done! The Pagans merely deny God—the Jews murdered Him on the Cross! Have we not suffered God’s murderers to live among us long enough?”
“Who is that man?” Don Felipe demanded.
“His name is Legion,” Raymonde answered mournfully. “Every age has many such.”
Felipe could no longer see the corpse of Hypatia. They must have burned the last of it for incense in the burner which now sent up fragrant curls as it swung, golden and clanking, in the acolyte’s
