The printouts from the computer translation program were designed to be read laterally, with one-third of the page on the left devoted to an actual facsimile of the original Latin in which the letter had been composed, the middle column a clear rendering of what those graphemes or characters probably were, and the right side providing the best approximate translation of the meaning. Many of the passages were asterisked and numbered, indicating that the supplemental pages at the back would include, where necessary, more extensive alternative readings — sometimes because the ancient text was faded and/or indecipherable, and sometimes because the complex structure of the passage had left too many questions for easy analysis. Computers were fine for rote work, but they had no sense of literary style.
But these words were unasterisked, unnumbered, and perfectly plain in their meaning.
On the morrow, I shall die. Preserve [protect] my soul, O Lord.
Joey squealed and Beth looked up. They were outside, in the little grassed-in area that passed for a yard, with Champ on relentless patrol, sniffing at the low iron fence that surrounded them and occasionally lifting a leg to show any possible rivals who was boss around these parts. It was dusk, but the heat of the day was still strong. Beth, in her eagerness to get away from the Getty, to read these pages for the first time in the privacy of her own home, had left work early, dismissed Robin, who was delighted (“Cool — there’s a band at the Viper Room that I wanted to see tonight!”), and gone outside with her briefcase and a tall glass of iced tea, which was precariously balanced on the wobbly little garden table by her side.
Of course, what she had done was a major breach of protocol. These pages, a translation of what now appeared to be the last testament of one of the world’s most accomplished illuminators, should have been immediately revealed to the Getty authorities and of course to the owner of
On the morrow, I shall die. Preserve [protect] my soul, O Lord. I am the most fortunate, and this night the most unfortunate, of men. I have done greatness [great works] and I have done [committed] great crimes [mischief, transgressions]. Perhaps it is for [due to] this that I have come to [been conveyed to] this place of unimagined splendor and equally unimagined barbarity… this palace of gold, where the waters [rivers] run red [with blood] and even glorious deeds lead to ignominious [shameful] death.
Beth paused. It was difficult reading, not only because her eye was constantly coursing back and forth across the page, checking the various columns to see that the computer had indeed read the Latin as she would have, and that the translation was on point — but because the words themselves were so direct, so full of import and dire portent. Were these in fact the last words of the man who had written
Joey was happily crawling around on the grass, assembling walls and towers out of multicolored, squeezable plastic cubes. She knew that mothers always thought their own children were especially talented and precocious, but still, she was impressed with the solidity and design of the battlements — and battlements were what they most reminded her of — that he was building. Just now he was capping another tower, which, because it was standing on the uneven ground, looked ready to topple any second. In Joey’s gray-blue eyes, she could see that he thought so, too. He looked around and, wouldn’t you know it, Champ stopped his patrolling long enough to turn, pick up a big red block in his mouth, and trot over with it. Joey added it, like a buttress, to the base of his tower.
What other infant, Beth wondered, could ever have done such a thing? Not for the first time, she thought about having his IQ checked. Could they do that with a child so young?
A fly landed on the papers in her lap, and she brushed it away. The sun was starting to set behind the Santa Monica Mountains, and the canyon below was growing dark, as if a blot of ink was slowly spreading across the thick brush and chaparral. She took a sip of her iced tea, wiped her fingers dry on the cotton shorts she was wearing, and returned to the pages in her lap.
I have come to this place by God’s hand, but without achieving [procuring] his Grace. It was the voice of Peter I heard, as it was heard by multitudes beside. Never had I met Holiness [sanctity], nor seen it, nor heard it, until that day in the fields. Peter bade us all to turn from combat and strife and the undoing of fellow Christian souls; he bade us turn our thoughts to our Savior and to the holy places He had walked, the places now defiled by the Saracen unbelievers.
My God, Beth thought, was this what she thought it was? Was it to be a firsthand account of a pilgrim — a Crusader? — to the Holy Land? Peter, she knew, was not meant to be St. Peter. But could it be the legendary Peter the Hermit, a bearded anchorite who had emerged in the late eleventh century to galvanize much of Europe and send them off to reclaim Palestine from the infidels? If that was true, then this scribe very likely spoke French, Peter’s native tongue and the language he used to stir up much of Western Europe. The scribe’s accomplishments continued to grow: he could compose and write exquisite Latin, he could provide illuminations that were breathtaking in their beauty and their power — and now, if she could guess where this was going, he was an adventurer, too, a man of action. More and more, she felt she was dealing with a man in the mold of a Cellini, a Caravaggio, or a Michelangelo. Not some cloistered fellow, who had seldom left the monastery’s scriptorium, but an artist of the first order, who had fully entered into the life of his time.
And if she was right about Peter the Hermit, then that time could now be neatly pinpointed — it was 1095 when Peter, newly returned from his first trip to the Holy Land, traveled to Rome to beseech the aid of the Pope. Everywhere he went, Peter stirred up religious fervor and, in an almost equal degree, bloodlust. Riding on a mule and wearing a long frock girded with a thick cord, he regaled the crowds that came to see him with terrible tales of the atrocities visited upon Christians journeying to Jerusalem. He called upon the angels to testify to the truth of his words, and as he spoke he wept and beat his own breast with a rude crucifix until he bled. He extolled the glories of Mount Zion, the rock of Calvary, the Mount of Olives, and Pope Urban II accepted him, as did thousands of others, as an anointed messenger from God.
So, too, did I hear the edicts of the Holy Father, who promised that all sins [mortal transgressions] could be thus expiated, and that no crime or deed of charge could be prosecuted against any such pilgrim.
Beth had to smile; her man was running true to form. Had he, like those other hot-blooded artists, committed some crime?
Further, no violence could be exercised against a Soldier of Christ without a verdict of anathema being brought upon the perpetrator.
If he had run afoul of the law, it must have been in a pretty bad way. But the scribe had secured his own protection; like so many others, he had enlisted in God’s army, and anyone who interfered with him now risked anathema — or excommunication. For some, no doubt, the Crusades had been a divine calling, but for many others, the war on the Muslims had provided a kind of medieval Get Out of Jail Free card.
Having felt the sting of persecution [injustice] myself, I could well imagine the sufferings of my fellow Christians, and wished to bend my will to the achievement of God’s greater purpose [higher plan]. We set out in the waning days of summer, a great army of the Lord, some among us knights on horseback, but many more on foot, with nothing but a staff and a satchel. In my own bag, I carried the tools of my trade, for I have long found that the skills of the artisan can prove more useful and more valuable than the weapons [ways; methods] of the warrior. In
