A Dirge for Prester John

Alaric frowned. “Tell me you do not intend to eat these books.”

I shrugged, affecting unconcern, embarrassed by my effusion before the younger, stronger man. “No, no. I only find it interesting, to walk in the echoes of the Word of God. One might see it as a sign from Heaven that we have found a true narrative here, for where we repeat the stories of Scripture, surely we walk in virtue.”

Alaric sunk his head into his rough cowl as shrinking from a chill that was nowhere to be found.

“Do you believe then, that we are dead, and in Paradise, and that tree you saw and touched was none other than the Tree of Eden, and we poor souls have passed from earth, but not lifted up our glasses to look upon the light?”

I looked up at the rooty mud roof of my chamber. I wanted a cheerful debate—Alaric gave me sepulchral poetry.

“Like Thomas Didymus, I do not know,” I sighed. “In all my days I have known nothing stranger nor more unearthly than this place, yet it does not have the tang of Paradise, to me.”

“Nor me,” breathed my Brother.

“Leave me to my work,” I said. “Prester John must soon meet the people of his nation, I feel certain. My pulse quickens each time I reach for his book among the others! Go, and make friendly with our hosts. Perhaps if I press, they will allow me to harvest more fruit from that tree.” I felt my excitement growing again, running away with me—for did I not wish to study this mortal trinity of books, to do Your work, Lord, without concern for my own hungering after knowledge, after the Priest-king? But instead of these reasoned thoughts I heard myself barking roughly: “More and more, until I am sated—and God gifted me with a great appetite for books, Brother Alaric!”

My friend adjourned, shaking his head, and I, my fever stoked all the higher, pushed a new nail into the soft tallow.

And I prayed for an improvement in the virtue of Prester John in future pages, for as of yet, I loved him more as a man than a priest.

THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

Chapter the Fourth, in Which John Suffers a Troubling Dream

I do not remember being found. I only remember a dreaming like drowning, a heavy weight pressing upon me. No matter how I strained, I could not get free. But at least it was dark and cold in the dream, and I saw neither sun nor moon. I liked the dream better than living, better than wandering in a world of unbaptized sheep. I do not even remember being carried, or cleaned, or laid upon a bed of any kind—though I dreamed so long that all of this must have occurred while I slept. I only remember the dream: I sat in a long field under the cooling evening sky, and all the stars, all the many stars, hung like lanterns, their strands tied to the terrible belly of a golden-rose sphere hanging heavy in the sky. The sphere drooped low, huge, bigger than any sun or moon, as big as the whole sky, pure crystal, the color of candlelight, with veins of blood flicking through it. I felt that if I put up my arms I could hold some tiny portion of its grand belly. The stars hung from it on silken strings, each no bigger than a pearl. And yet, when I looked up at it, I felt deep shame, and wept, though I knew not why. It turned, slowly, in my dreaming sight.

Below this sphere sat a throne of carved black wood, and the posts of that chair had collected a sifting of snow, though no snow now fell. None other than my friend Kostas sat upon the throne, his narrow face regarding me with sorrow. At his feet two hounds crouched, one made of gold and one of bone.

“In the kingdom of memory,” Kostas said, “the amnesiac is king.” He watched me implacably, the good and measured soul who carried my parchment and ran for wine at dusk with my coin, who remained so perfectly untroubled by the question of whether or not painting the face of God was an act of devilry or divinity, whether Christ was Flesh or Word, or the awful mystery of Word-in-Flesh, who wanted in all the world little more than a few wet dates and a bit of lamb-fat for his bread.

“Kostas,” I whispered, and fell before him with my face to the stony earth. “I want to go home. I should not have left. Look at how I am punished the moment I abandon my city.”

“What home can there be for heretics like us?” said my friend, and I knew he spoke the truth—at least concerning myself, who had thrown his lot with Nestorius and the Logos.

I looked up at him, throned in glory. “What heresy could you have committed? You are an innocent.”

Kostas put his naked brown hand upon the head of the golden hound; the creature arched her head to meet his palm.

“I was an idolater, and you my golden bull. I wished not to be like Christ but to be like you. I worshipped you, and tried to imitate your life, instead of that of a saint who might deliver my soul. I dreamed that one day, if I performed every act perfectly, you might praise me with some small word, and that word I would have folded into a cedar box and preserved forever. That word would have been enough.”

Again, shame washed over me like a hot tide. I pressed my face once into the earth, which gave way in the dream, black and soft. Yet upon my pate a new pair of eyes opened, and I saw

with them perfectly, and was not spared any sight. I whispered: “I have never heard you speak this way.”

“Well,” said the dream-image, and he removed his hand from the golden hound to caress her bone sister, who ground her teeth in pleasure. I could see her fangs through the bones of her narrow cheek. “I am not really Kostas. In the kingdom of sleep, the insomniac plays his tricks.”

Kostas turned his dear, lovely head full to one side, and when he turned it back towards me, it had become the face of an old man, but one hale of health and rosy of nose, as though he either drank much or spent his days in snowy crevices where the wind bit at his extremities. He possessed a beard, and dark hair not yet yielded up to white. His eyes shone huge and deep, lights in the dark, stars wheeling within him. All this I saw through my dream-eyes, which blinked on my skull. The golden sphere bore down on us.

“Raise your head, my son. Did you not come seeking me?”

I looked through my natural vision, but knew him not.

“I am Didymus Thomas, Thomas the Twin. I am an Apostle of Christ. Child, do you not know me?”

Thomas the Saint smiled with a tenderness so keen and sad I thought I might die there and never wake, but wander in this half-lit place forever, until in waking life my bones shivered into dust and blew down the length of some unnamed valley and out of anyone’s memory save a few damned sheep. On his throne beneath the golden sphere, Saint Thomas opened his shirt, not to beckon, but to reveal: he bore a second pair of eyes upon his chest, and a mouth in his navel. Out of this second mouth he whispered:

“Go now, my son. I forgive you all that is to come.”

The golden sphere descended, and I felt it press on the bones of my back, crushing me with its impossible weight, its solemn light.