A Dirge for Prester John

She gave me a pitying look, as one gives to a child who has interrupted his teacher to give the answer before the question is asked and thus blurted out that Jerusalem was the chief city of Russia.

I do not desire you. I do desire that a man who demands so much of us, our treasure, our food, our goodwill, our chairs, give to me whatever I ask, and I ask for a night. I want to know who you are, Alaric of Rouen, and who Hiob is, and how you dare appear as if out of a dream and put your hands around us, squeezing until you have all you desire. Of course you speak to me of desire, desire is all you are made of. And though you may not trespass the bounds of my body, you will certainly trespass anywhere else you please, and yet have the temerity to call yourself chaste while you thrust against my world.

Women and sharks both flay one alive, but only women can shame a man while they slice out his heart.

I agreed; it is a small price. The boredom of the contemplative life will give her a meager coin—I doubt she will be able to stay awake through my accounts of learning to read Latin and assisting Brother Vridel in the herbiary. The life cycle of fennel is such a fascinating subject. But what night she would ask of me she kept to herself as all other things, and allowed me to chose once more from the tree. However, I would not make Hiob’s mistake. I do not have his pride, and I did not care if I were the one to read the tree’s strange fruit first. Before I took my first steps towards the orchard, I drew together two of the younger novices, Brother Reinolt and Brother Goswin, neither of whom I cared for pe

rsonally (thus I would not be weakened by affection, but have the strength to be cruel to them). Each of them had an elegant hand and an obedient enough ear, and both showed signs of a dangerous sort of boredom. Their eyes had become canine, tracking the young women of the village as they went about their livelihoods. Novices, until they have burst their last pimple, are consistently engorged and constantly besieged with temptation. Best to put them to work.

Copy as quickly as you can. Do not make mistakes. Do not put your head in your hand and read dreamily. These books will rot and you must beat them at the race, to take their tales before they puff out in a cloud of spores. If you feel your heart moved by the story, your mind drifting to distant lands all full of fantastical creatures, think on Hiob, and how that vine will feel in your own mouth, cracking your teeth.

The choice was mine this time. It sat heavily with me; Hiob chose so well I cannot believe it was anything other than Providence. What if I should chose nothing specially of interest to us, some chronologue of tree sap and yearly rainfall? What if I should fail and spoil all my preparation? Why could there not be some kind-hearted librarian cloistered away in the village, with a reliable catalogue of all the books the tree could be relied upon to produce? How I should like to meet that man; all would be made clear and easy. Instead I was made to stand at the doubled-up root of the devilish tree, looking up into its boughs, terribly full and bright, the afternoon sun impossibly golden, filtering through the scarlet leaves and full, ripe fruit: in squares and scrolls, in red and green and blue and violet and silver, a hundred books and more in which I was meant to discover the fate of the Kingdom of Prester John, and ransom Hiob from his insensate and rapturous sleep.

In the end it seemed better to chose at random and trust in God than try to somehow apply strategy to such a great mystery. I climbed a little, shut my eyes, thrust out my hand, climbed a little more, did much the same, and tumbled back down the tree with three books clutched to my chest, out of breath, their perfume pulling at me with dusky fingers. Only then did I dare to look at my catch, my net of strange fish hooked out of the sky.

The first was deep blue, and on its cover a wing had been embossed, its feathers spread open like fingers.

The second was leafed in silver, glistening dully, and on its surface I saw a hand, and in the palm of the hand there was a monstrous mouth, open as if to speak.

The last was black, heavy and solid, and it crackled slightly as I touched it, as if it had once been burnt. On it was figured a creature with a dozen arms, arranged around its body like the spokes of a wheel.

I shuddered and flushed all together, and I felt as I did once long ago, when a girl came to my window all bright with the night, her eyes full of stars, her lips dark and trembling with the January cold and the very nearness of sin. The image of her rose so fiercely in me; I felt towards those books the same anticipation as when she stood quite still at the threshold of my house and my body, and I suppose I was as helpless before each of them as the other. All my plans fled before me. I wanted to open them all, for everything to be open and plain and naked before me.

The books were warm and alive in my hands. Yet the moment passed, and I could not see that lost girl in my memory any longer, nor the darkness of her lips. The day was bleeding out, and so much work to be done.

SATURN, COLD AND DRY

The palace in which our Supereminency resides is built after the pattern of the castle built by the apostle Thomas the Twin for the Indian king Gundoforus. Ceilings joints and architrave are of sethym wood, the roof ebony, which can never catch fire. Over the gable of the palace are, at the extremities, two golden apples, in each of which are two carbuncles, so that the gold may shine by day and the carbuncles by night. The greater gates of the palace are of sardius with the horn of the horned snake inwrought so that no one can bring poison within. The other portals are of ebony; the windows are of crystal; the tables are partly of gold, partly of amethyst; the columns supporting the tables are partly of ivory, partly of amethyst. The court in which we watch the jousting is floored with onyx in order to increase the courage of the combatants. In the palace at night, nothing is burned for light, but wicks supplied with balsam…

Before our palace stands a mirror, the ascent to which consists of five and twenty steps of porphyry and serpentine. This mirror is guarded day and night by three thousand men. We look therein and behold all that is taking place in every province and region.

Seven kings wait upon us monthly, in turn, with sixty-two dukes, two hundred and fifty-six counts and marquises. Twelve archbishops sit at table with us on our right and twenty bishops on the left, besides the patriarch of St. Thomas, the Sarmatian Protopope, and the Archpope of Susa… our high lord steward is a primate and king, our cup-bearer is an archbishop and king, our chamberlain a bishop and king, and our marshal a king and abbot.

—The Letter of Prester John,

1165

THE BOOK

OF THE RUBY

Being an Account of the Winning and Losing of a Great War, composed by Hagia of the Blemmyae

Despite Protestation, as Her Daughter Anglitora, who Commanded the Forces of Her Nation, There Being No One Else About Who Knew a Damned Bit About the Business of Fighting, God Save Them All, Never Learned Her Letters.

This is not my tale to tell.

I am but a reluctant author—that thick, deep root which storytellers tap and from which they suck up all their strength is not mine. I have no map to it. Perhaps one day I shall have the muscular fortitude to write in truth for myself, to tell the tale of how I was born, how I lived and worked, how I drank from the Fountain and loved my mother. Of John’s coming to our country, and how I met and first loved him. How we made our child between us like a strange machine. It seems, to be frank, a gargantuan task and I am tired. When I think of the great number of words that would have to be piled upon themselves in order even to begin the long fable of his rule, my heart stills and wishes only to sleep. What a heap of useless, glittering gems those words would be! And such work to build them up, only to lose the lot if just one ruby were misplaced. No, I could not do it. It is too much. When I am older; when I have wisdom like holes where my teeth used to be, wisdom where anger and need used to be, then I will tell that tale.

And yet here I sit, in a tent of black silk with silver stars stitched into it, the war over and everything sour, I sit and scratch parchment in the country of the cranes, hiding here, hoping not to be found. Dawn on the Rimal is a lonely thing. It is a line the sun crosses. One moment you can only see black and the next a kind of hard, sharp whiteness cuts neatly across the sand, as quiet as shears, slicing away the wool of the night. All that’s left is skin. The bald, peeled skin of the sun and the sand, mating endlessly across the expanse of the Rimal. And in the dim light the girl at my side glares at me with her black eyes with golden sparks stitched into them. She says:

Why are you making excuses? Just say what happened. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It’s just that someone has to say it. Or else who will remember? All our friends are dead.

The girl is my daughter. And as she sees me write this she puts out her soft pale wingtip to touch my hand so tenderly, as a daughter touches her mother when they have both been through so much, when they have hurt together like two wet ropes pulling in opposite directions, when they have fought with their shoulder blades pressed together like one flesh. This is how she touches me, but she says:

I am not your daughter. I love you like a hard, hot knot, but you have to tell the truth. You have to write that I am John’s get but not yours, and how it hurt you, and how my real mother sounded when she spoke, and how you first met me, and what I brought to you that day, and how you didn’t forgive me for a long time. I can’t write it, so you have to. I know you can. You owe me the best words you can think of. It doesn’t have to be pretty but it has to be true.

She brought a helmet. And I still haven’t forgiven her.