The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [48]
I rubbed at my eyes. The book before me, Imtithal’s book, all scarlet and thick, had gone deep brown at the edges. The smell of it had sweetened as I read, and the creases showed dark, softened. I knew then that I had little more than that night to read and to copy—the books would rot, would die as a body dies, and their words would vanish as the soul. No wonder I could only take three—in one night even I could manage no more, and probably not even this.
I called for Brother Alaric, my closest friend in our troupe. He is old enough to jealously guard his stories of youthful vigor, which is to say he is near enough to forty, and his mind is swift, severe and sharp. He came silently, and his presence comforted. He brought with him a mug of some thick, fortifying tea and something like a yoghurty beer, a rough plate laid with a slice of fowl the woman in yellow had cooked in her lord’s hearth, and a clay bowl of flat red leaves.
“She says they are stimulating, and will help you to stay awake. She bade me ignite them, thus,” Alaric said, and he took up my candle, holding the flame to the leaves until wax spattered them and finally, they lit, releasing a savory smoke into the room which did indeed rouse me somewhat. I drank the draught and chewed the dark meat gratefully, while Alaric looked over my copying, exclaiming over this and that thing.
“Of course we cannot credit that the Priest-king had a wife!” he marveled. “Nor this nonsense about Thomas Judas and some kind of elephant.”
I inhaled the smoke deeply, and took up the role of the worldly advocate, thinking to draw out Alaric’s thoughts and to help order my own. “You think so? Many holy soldiers did worse in the Holy Land than taking a lawful wife or making friends with a child.”
Alaric touched the browning pages. “It must be a fiction,” he said firmly. “You know how writers love to sully the reputations of the saints. It is a fiction written by Abbas the king, or worse, that woman with her awful eyes.”
“Perhaps,” I said, savoring the last of the beer. “I no longer know what to think. For all we are here seeking a man no one has met, and whose deeds are preserved only in an ancient letter.”
“But Brother Hiob, many have met him! Many doctors of learning and soldiers of fortune have returned from the east with tales of Prester John, and stones from his throne, branches from his orchards.”
“I have not finished my inquiry, Brother Alaric, I could not possibly say.”
And thus settled, we sat for a time, enjoying the scented smoke as I allowed my old eyes to rest.
“As I read, I have been thinking on what has befallen us here, Brother. Do you know, the woman in yellow allowed me only three books from her marvelous tree?”
“Certainly, Brother Hiob,” said Alaric dubiously. Do not blame him, Lord. He was not there; he did not see the beautiful tree, overflowing with books. I would not have believed me, either. But my thoughts whirled too quickly, one after the other, making connections and chasing after them. I hurried on, feeling alive as I had not for years.
“Poor man. Incredulity is not a virtue in your line of work. But can you not see what I see? Seth, too, was granted but three grains from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life entwined in Paradise. He ate them and a bush grew from his mouth, all aflame, and from the wood of that sapling came the wood of the doors of Solomon, and even the Holy Cross that bore our Lord Christ.”
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.