Sylvia (29 page)

‘I am told that your language is already well advanced, but that you lack skill with a quill and with the nature of the alphabet and the art of spelling. We will work assiduously on these.'

‘Thank you, Father,' I replied again. I should have liked to kiss him if he hadn't been a priest.

‘Do not thank me so quickly, my child. There is a condition.'

My heart stood still. Frau Sarah had been through the various conditions males impose on the prettier of the opposite sex and I had heard of errant priests who break their vow of chastity.
Please,
God, let it not be that
, I prayed silently.

‘After a few months at the age of fourteen you must enter a convent as a novice in order to undertake religious orders. Father Hermann and I both agree that God has a special calling for you, Sylvia.'

I felt at once ashamed that I might think of Father Paulus as I had just done. It was a sin to think evil in anticipation. I would ask God for forgiveness. Then I realised that the blessed Father Hermann Joseph with his constant nagging that I enter a convent had won with this new promise of Latin instruction. Father Paulus, it was now obvious, had consulted with him after Master Israel's visit and he, as the senior cleric, had placed this condition on my opportunity of further learning.

I needed now to decide if the terms were acceptable, although I knew immediately in my heart that to be able to search out the word of God myself from Latin text was priceless and that I would accept. But I could hear Master Israel's words as if he was standing at my side. ‘Never accept the first price, there is always a little more to be gained. If not, you have lost nothing.'

‘But what of my Latin, Father? After but a few months there will still be a great deal to learn and I cannot continue my study as a novice in a nunnery where they will regard me as a peasant and set me to work in the kitchen and the vegetable garden.'

‘Humility, my child. To work in a kitchen and a garden is also God's work,' he chided.

‘Then I have been doing God's work since I was seven years old and mark Him pleased with me, for He has given me the gift of learning and placed it in thy hands, Father.'

Father Paulus laughed. ‘I begin to see why I lost to you at chess, my child. We will find a convent where the facilities exist and the abbess agrees that you may learn further in order that you become a scribe.'

‘And only perform the duties of a scribe and not a peasant?' I pushed him.

‘Sylvia, what is this about a peasant? Can you not see, you are far from this humble station in life, even though to be born of humble lineage is no disgrace. Your manners are courtly. You have the appearance and the voice of an angel. I am told you speak Hebrew and the dreadful patois of the German Jew, Yiddish. That this year, under the Jew's tutelage, you undertake to learn Greek and Aramaic and if you learn them as well as you did Hebrew then you will be quadlingual without counting your native tongue. Father Hermann and I have with our own eyes seen you perform two miracles, the one of the birds and the other of the Virgin's rose. There is also talk of others we have not witnessed. Do you think that an abbess, accepting you into her convent, would want to use thee for a scullery maid to stir the soup or pull turnips from the garden?'

‘Will you tell Mother Superior all this, please, Father? Discounting the miracles, for I do not claim them.'

‘Yes, willingly,' he said, a little impatiently. ‘I do not think it will be necessary – whether you disagree we all know of the blood on the rose, the birds and of thy miraculous appearance in the bathhouse as an angel to castigate the three harlots for their sins.'

‘What!' I cried, astonished. ‘Nay, Father, I went there to take a bath! You may ask the attendant! Her name is Gilda. She saw me well.'

‘Aye, we have interviewed her and the three sinful women who have repented and vow to henceforth live chaste lives. Gilda of the Bathhouse says she heard them screaming and then saw them run naked from the bathhouse. When she entered she saw an angel naked with the sign of the fish on her back. She swears she had never set eyes upon you before that moment and that no person may enter the bathhouse without her knowing or paying the bath fee.'

‘They are not being truthful, Father. Gilda, perhaps to protect me, for she proved a goodly woman and took good care of me when the three whores . . . er, women, threatened me. As for them, I know not why they would want to tell such a confounding and preposterous tale.'

Father Paulus seemed unimpressed with my explanation. ‘Sylvia, the woman Gilda claims she gave you a petticoat to cover your nakedness and to hide the holy sign of the fish upon your back.' He paused for breath and looked at me steadily. ‘The bathhouse woman's veracity is soon determined. Sylvia, is there the fish sign of the apostles on your back?

‘It is a birthmark, Father.'

‘Do you know that it is a mark of our Saviour and His apostles?'

‘Father, I beg you, it is but a mark I was born with, the shape is happenstance.'

There was a silence now between us, then Father Paulus looked up at me, his washed-out blue eyes appealing and sincere. ‘Sylvia, I do not wish you to take this in the wrong manner for I am a priest and sworn to celibacy. But could you turn your back towards me and show me this sign?'

Sighing deeply, I replied, ‘Father, I cannot disobey you, but it is of no importance. My greatest wish is that it never was.' I turned so that my back faced the little priest and pulled at my gown until it was halfway down towards my waist, sufficient to reveal the birthmark.

‘Glory be to God!' he exclaimed, and I heard a slight thump and looked back over my shoulder and down to see him on his knees, his hands clasped in prayer. ‘Though art truly blessed!' he exclaimed. ‘Why did you not tell us of this before? It would count greatly in the favour of the Miracle of the Blood on the Rose if the bishop should know that God has singled you out with the sign of Jesus and His apostles.'

‘Father, you must please rise!' I cried in impatience and despair. ‘I am no more blessed than any other and count this sufficient in God's eyes.'

Father Paulus rose to his feet. ‘The three harlots were right to come to Father Hermann and tell him of the vision.'

‘Nay, Father, there was no vision!' I said, now close to tears.

Father Paulus shook his head in wonder, seeming not to hear my outcry. ‘Father Hermann agreed to hear their confessions but asked what the vision might be. It is not unusual for simple folk to think they have witnessed a miracle and it is every priest's task to examine them. Many miracles are claimed, but few of them go beyond the initial questioning of the village priest.' I recalled Father Pietrus talking about the woman who had seen the face of the Virgin on a piece of cloth that hung from her washing line.

‘When was this, Father?' I asked, thinking by questioning him I might bring him to his senses.

My question seemed to work and he paused to think. ‘I am not exactly sure, a day or two after the blood on the Virgin's rose, perhaps?'

‘Ha! When Nicholas and his urchins had already spread the rumour of the rose.'

‘That I daresay, but how does this affect their testimony? Oh, I see. You mean the three women named it a vision to explain their shame at running naked from the bathhouse. Is that it?'

‘Aye.'

But the scribe in him was now back and the bewildered priest quite gone. ‘But what else might have caused them to run unclad from the bathhouse? If you were there and not as an angel, then you must know this!'

I was placed in a predicament, not knowing how to answer this question without telling of the dagger. ‘They ran from me . . . there was a fight,' I explained, somewhat lamely. Father Hermann had obviously honoured the confidentiality of my confession and not told Father Paulus the details of what had happened in the bathhouse. If I now explained the incident to the little priest, what would he think of me when he knew of my violent nature? Would he yet agree to teach me Latin?

Father Paulus looked at me somewhat askance. ‘Do you expect me to believe that three large and rough women known to be of a violent disposition were sufficiently terrorised by a young girl to flee naked from the bathhouse?'

There seemed no point in explaining any further. Even the correct explanation now seemed improbable and with the addition of Gilda revealing the so-called sign of the fish and thinking to protect me by saying she hadn't seen me enter the bathhouse, I wasn't going to be believed, no matter what I said.

‘Yes, Father, that was what happened.'

Father Paulus was silent for several moments, seeming to be thinking. ‘Sylvia, what know you of the nature of visions?'

‘Nothing, Father, other than that saints appear to have them and Father Hermann claims them numerously in his childhood and often enough as an adult with the Virgin Mary.'

‘Did he tell you what happens when one has a vision?'

‘Nay, Father, he has not talked to me about them. What I know is only hearsay, as any Christian might hear from the pulpit about a saint or one that is blessed.'

‘Well, a vision is what is known as an out-of-body experience. We see it and we are immersed in it, but we are not necessarily a physical part of it, experiencing it
not
with our body, but in our hearts and minds. A child, in his innocence, will speak of a vision quite ingenuously. A man of God, such as a priest, will speak of it from knowing it to be a spiritual experience. But others, commonfolk, who count themselves both sensible and sane, will think it but a dream or some peculiar and sudden alteration of the mind and will either remain silent or seek a simple explanation such as the one you have just given me. I put it to you that God used you to appear in a vision to these three sinful women, and that not understanding why they fled, you thought it was because of your rebuke. There is clear evidence from witnesses that when you appeared on the steps of the bathhouse people could see that you had about you the touch of the divine hand and they pronounced you there and then the Petticoat Angel.'

Father Paulus seemed well pleased with this explanation. He had stated it with such cogent authority that, for several moments, I felt myself taken up with its possibility, which goes to show that belief is not always fostered in
what
is said, but in who it is that pronounces it. Such an explanation from Reinhardt would have set me to laughter and ridicule.

Realising that by accepting his ecclesiastical sophistry I might bring an end to this discussion, I answered meekly, ‘Yes, thank you, Father, I can see what you mean.'

It was an answer meant to satisfy him but he must have sensed the doubt in my acceptance, for he declared, ‘Father Hermann and I have decided that the Miracle of the Blood on the Rose taken together with your summoning of the birds is sufficient evidence for the bishop to peruse and we have not included the vision of the Petticoat Angel in the bathhouse.' I was most relieved to hear this, but then Father Paulus added, ‘We may need it as evidence at a later time, and I will notify Father Hermann of the blessed sign of the fish. I know he will be most excited.'

I confess I felt much safer in the pragmatic hands of the Christ-doubting Jews, Frau Sarah and Master Israel, than ever I did in the hands of the two priests bent on proving that I was touched by a divine authority. And I longed to be back in the reasoned and secular presence of Master Israel.

As I walked home from St Martin's much pleased that my Latin studies were to be continued, I could not help but wonder what the two priests would think if they knew that I spent my free time in a whorehouse laughing among the courtesans, or that they told me of the strange proclivities of their patrons or that I knew the most delicate and intimate information about the mayor, the bishop, many nobles and notables.

Then, again, these two were of different ambitions, Father Hermann in his extreme naivety would regard this fraternisation as a manifestation of my saintliness: that in the mornings I worked among the street children and the poor and then at other times among the harlots to cause them to repent and so bring them the comfort of Jesus Christ our Lord. I could also understand the motives of Father Paulus, a scribe, cloistered and all but chained to his desk, suddenly presented with tears of blood on a pure white rose that had no explanation other than a divine one. Of course, he wasn't stupid and he'd examined my hands and no doubt also the boy's, but the advent of my woman's blood would have been beyond his imagination or perhaps even his secular knowledge. It was not only the common people who were constantly on the lookout for signs and portents and he would be overcome with joy that he had been privileged to witness a miracle.

If I appeared to have changed in how I perceived my faith, it was not that I had forsaken my love for Christ Jesus or my belief in a merciful, all-powerful and loving God, but only that Master Israel was teaching me to think for myself, to always closely question how I interpreted what I saw or thought was the truth. ‘The mind is conditioned early and prejudice is often bred in the cradle,' he'd once said. ‘Do not deny your own experience or belittle it for what may be a common though false belief. To thine own self be true.' Furthermore, my increasing knowledge of God's word in the Latin text often gave me a greater insight into His truth and its meaning, so that I was less reliant on the words of priests who, it seemed to me, often quoted text from habit and by rote, long after they had forgotten the true, blessed and proper meaning of the Scriptures.