The Hermetica of Elysium (Elysium Texts Series) (29 page)

Conti coughed, held up a hand to stop William who moved to support him. “I regret your encounter with the Inquisition, Lord Montrose.”

Montrose growled and lunged again for Conti. Nadira pushed him back with all her strength. Any more aggression from Montrose would bring in Juan and the guards. She was amazed they had not already been summoned. “My lord, please.” He staggered against the table, trembling with repressed rage. William righted the overturned bench. Nadira helped Montrose down, and then sat on his thigh, more to keep him seated than to comfort him. William led Conti, rubbing his neck, to the other end of the same bench.

After he sat Conti down William relit with a shaking hand the candles that had been disturbed. “I have had enough!” William was wild. “Right now, right now in this room at this time! I want to know the truth of this matter.” He turned to Conti. “Do you hold me against
my
will? Do your plans depend upon my good will as well?” He thumped his chest to punctuate his words.

“Why such secrecy?” He pointed a slender finger at Montrose. “And you my lord, there will be no more murders, attempted murders, assaults or any other kind of violence!” His golden eyes flashed.

Conti nodded as he reached for the wine on the table and poured himself a cup. “My friends, please be patient.”

“Do not plead for time, monsieur. None here have the stomach for it.” Montrose said wearily as he took the cup Conti poured for him.

“I plead not for time, but for understanding. I find it difficult, if not impossible to convey, even to you, William, what needs to be said.”

“It is time to try.” William took a long pull on his own cup and stared defiantly at his master.

Conti looked at each of them before beginning. “I first learned of this infernal book when I was in Wittenberg. The scholars there were speaking of a book brought back from the last Crusade that contained the answers to all questions. Such a thing was hard to believe, but it is harder for a man to call a priest a liar. I asked at every stop I made that summer. Many had heard of this book, though none had seen it or read it. There were many different stories as to who possessed it and how it came into their hands. By the time my season’s journeys were over, I was convinced the book existed and I was determined to find it.” Conti took another drink of his wine, rubbing his throat. He made a wry face at Montrose.

“I had to be careful, as I was met with suspicion for my questions. As the next summer progressed, I was able to determine the book had traveled to Toledo or Granada. I hurried to reach those cities before winter put a stop to my travels. The prince was kind enough to permit me to reside here in his tower until the book could be located. Of course, there is a price for his hospitality. His Highness expects a copy of this book when it is found.”

“William was procured from Father Bertram at Coix to aid in my work. He has been an exemplary scholar and copyist.” Conti gazed at him with real affection.

“But I must say,” Conti continued, “I was not prepared for Brother Valentine’s visit this spring. He carried with him what I was sure was the book. He said he had come from Coix and that he had removed the book from Brother Henry against Henry’s wishes. He said he must flee for Rome, as the book was an item greatly desired by the Holy Father. Of course, Valentine’s departure from the tower was delayed by an onset of some kind of bowel trouble…” Conti’s lips stretched into a wicked smile. “A bout just lengthy enough for William to copy as much as possible.”

“And I wrote day and night for three interminable days,” William added.

“As did I. Fortunately, the book is not long, and we did not copy the parts we had acquired from other sources. Father Valentine recovered and set off with his prize for Rome none the wiser having spilled some of his treasure into our coffers.”

“So you have read the book,” Montrose said.

“Parts of it.”

“And you find your sanity intact?”

“Parts of it,” laughed Conti, trying to lighten the mood in the room. “It is like this, my lord. We men believe what we are told. Few of us bother to test these beliefs, especially when so much of what we are told is obvious in the world around us. Fire will burn you if you touch it. Ice will freeze you and water will wet you. These things we learned at our mothers’ knees, and tested in uncomfortable and uncompromising ways.”

“But how is it that some things we are told are not able to be tested? Where is God? Why does the rain fall? How does a bee fly? Why do some fall to plague while others are untouched? We are told the answers to these mysteries as well. Instead of our mothers’ skirts we turn to men in long cassocks, somberly intoning in obsolete languages. In our fear and ignorance, we turn to those who appear confident that they know the answers. And we believe them. And our minds become tarnished with their answers.” Conti took a deep breath and patted William’s hand, as the priest was visibly upset by what he was hearing.

“Other shining, untarnished minds have come before us, lighting this path to understanding. But the sword of fear and ignorance has cut down their mortal forms, dissolving them as time does to all of us, to dust. Yet, their minds remain on paper. Their thoughts come to us in ink and parchment, packaged in tiny receptacles of light and wisdom. These vessels of knowledge have encoded in them the only thing immortal to a man: his soul. I have collected the minds of many great men, and a few women,” Conti smiled at Nadira. “Perhaps later we shall read the poetry of some of them one evening. I find the minds of women to be particularly ethereal.“

He turned back to Montrose, “But now I will answer your question. When the great minds are encountered by the ignorant, a change takes place, a struggle in the minds of the men who read them. In that struggle lies the danger of madness, for should one idea take root where a conflicting one resides there can be no peace for that man. He will fall into a fear that ultimately leads to despair. This is what happened to Brother Henry. I went to Coix to interview him after Valentine’s departure. He was raving, as you remember, and violent. In his mind battled the two most terrifying thoughts for such a man: his complete reliance on God, The Father, and the direct experience of knowing that there is no god.”

“Surely you jest, monsieur,” William said quietly.

Conti leaned over to lay his arm across William’s shoulders. “William, you see why I appear to be secretive. This knowledge is no secret to the initiated, but to those still living in the ignorance of childhood it is a great evil. To admit there is no God is to damn the world to cycles of despair and destruction with no hope of ending. That is how it appears to the simple man. It is not the truth, however. Far from it.”

“I have heard these humanistic arguments before…”

“Yes, but not from me. And not in this context. I want you to know that had this confession not been forced on me by our passionate guest, I would have broken this to you gently, and in a more meaningful way.”

“I would still have resisted.”

“Perhaps. However…”

“Gentlemen. I do not mean to be rude.” Montrose interrupted with some sarcasm, “but I still demand to know to what use you plan to put this maiden.”

Conti sighed. He leaned forward and took Nadira’s hand. “Nadira, your mind is unfettered by any dogma. Only you can look into the phial of light that is this book and tell me what you see without the danger of madness. I want your eyes and your heart to see what I cannot and bring it back to me, that I may understand more of what I desire.”

Montrose took her wrist and pulled her back from Conti’s touch. “I, too, have retained Nadira to read this book for me,” he said, “but not for any desire to see its truths, but to identify it so it may be destroyed. My brother told me it would be used to summon demons that will bring death and pestilence upon the world through the evils of its words. He told me the Holy Father would use the book as an instrument of his lust for power and bring suffering, not enlightenment, to all men.”

Conti spread his hands on the table. “As with all great instruments, there is good and evil in how it is played. A horn’s delicate tremuloso can be made to pierce the ear with pain by the inept player. So it is with this book. In the hands of the wrong man, the power of its liberation can cause great suffering. Even to an individual as Brother Henry. No demon sapped his mind. The book did not torch him. Brother Henry is a victim of his own ironclad beliefs. He could not open his awareness for the torrent and the waves that crashed through the barred doors of his mind, breaking it.”

Montrose thought about this, rubbing the short stubble of his beard. Nadira looked to William, but the priest was staring unseeing into his cup, which he held clasped tightly in both hands. Conti leaned back, stretching his arms. Nadira met his eyes and he smiled at her.

“I have heard from all but you, little one. Do you feel your mind stretching?”

Nadira smiled thinly. She pointed her chin toward William staring unmoving. “It is his mind that should worry you, monsieur.”

“This is naught but a philosophy lesson, taught by the ancient heathens, my friend,” he said with great compassion to the little friar.

“No. It is not.” William’s face twisted as though he felt a great pain.

“Drink your wine, William, then to bed.” Conti gently pushed his cup toward the little friar.

“No, monsieur,” Nadira interrupted. “Do not send him to such a dark place when his thoughts have taken him there already. Look at me, William,” she commanded. His gaze lifted slowly from the dark cup to the liquid of her eyes. She peered into his heart, his eyes darkened by doubt and fear. “What did Plato say about such things? Surely, such a wise man had something to say about the minds of men in the face of the unknown. Remember his words and tell me now.” She held his face up to hers insisting. Slowly she saw a glimmer appear and grow. William reached up and removed her hands from his face, but held them together in his own.

“He said, ‘Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only: perhaps he may be able to find someone who will make him discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life.’” William quoted unsteadily.

“You are seeking knowledge, William. This cannot be evil.” Nadira pressed her cheek against his.

“Oh, Nadira,” Conti chuckled. “You are such an innocent and I do so love you for it. There is a story in scripture about the first man and the first woman God created. He placed them in a beautiful garden for His most important test. He said, “You may eat the fruit of all the trees save one.”

“I know this story, monsieur,” Nadira said dryly. “Everyone knows this story.”

“Then you can understand how William must see the search for knowledge as inherently evil.”

“Yet I know he does not. Do you, William?” Nadira asked him, intent on his eyes.

William sighed and released her hands. “I have been indulging myself these many years. Always wanting to know more, to see more, and to share the ideas of others. Tonight, however my journey has taken me back to the beginning. I must think about this.”

“It is late.” Montrose stood. “Where shall I sleep, monsieur? I shall not take your bed forever. It is time I return it to you.”

Conti bowed low. “I will not separate you. I have no objection to your claim on her, Lord Montrose, only to the spoiling of her mind.” To Nadira he said, “Take him if you determine he is fit to leave this room. I know you have much to discuss even at this late hour. Try to make him see this tower as a sanctuary and not so much a prison. Tell him you have been the recipient of my finest hospitality for these long weeks. I ask this of you, my dear, for his eyes tell me he will not hear me say these things.”

Conti grasped William’s shoulder. “And you, my son. You must not trouble yourself over this matter. Tomorrow will be like today and the day after. You can be comfortable in the stability of your place here.” He squeezed.

Nadira looked into each of the three faces. Conti was uneasy. Montrose was weary. William looked ghastly in the candlelight. She moved closer to him and embraced him from behind around his shoulders as he sat huddled over the table.

“William,” she whispered into his ear, “we will talk tomorrow.” William did not answer, but he reached up and squeezed her hand.

Nadira released him with a pat on his shoulder and said goodnight to Conti. She led Montrose up the cold stairs to her chamber. He followed wearily on her heels. Maria lay sleeping on her pallet by the fire. Nadira did not disturb her, but lightly knelt beside her, stirring the dying fire and placing another log end on the glowing coals.

Montrose fell heavily into her bed. “I am weary,” he said simply.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

M
ONTROSE
was asleep shortly after he fell into her bed. Nadira watched him, weighing her decision. She glanced at Maria sleeping before the fire on her pallet.
Plenty of
room there.
She turned back to the bed.
But softer
here, and warmer even than by the fire.
She smiled, covered him with a blanket and crawled in beside him.

She lay awake, looking at the rafters and thinking. Monsieur had excited her with his ideas and the prospect of learning from him. New thoughts. New ideas. A realm beyond eating and sleeping and keeping dry and warm. She turned her head. Montrose lay on his back, his mouth slightly open, snoring softly.
And he is thoroughly distressed.
She thought about his unexpressed grief for his brother, his visible worry for Garreth and Alisdair, and his despair over his crippling injury. Nadira frowned.
This is a realm I cannot
explore in a cart or on horseback. This is real, but untouchable. No poultice will heal this hurt. But what
will?
Her eyes darted back and forth as she searched her memory for an answer. What can ease his anguish? She startled, blinking as the answer came to her.
Only
action
.