Sylvia (40 page)

‘Nicholas, listen to me, this is
not
magic!' I cried.

‘What then?' he asked.

‘There is something in them that turns the mind, it is not good to take them all the time!'

‘Sylvia, you said yourself that they were of God's creation.' He then repeated the conversation we had had in the woods the first time we had found the magic mushrooms. ‘You said the mushroom was like praying, which you said was inward healing. “Prayer heals our spirit while we pray,” you said. You also said a mushroom is God's own work.' He quoted me again. ‘“If He has caused it to induce visions that are safe and heal the spirit and instruct the mind, are they not to be tried?”' He looked at me accusingly. ‘That's what you said, Sylvia.'

His sharp mind had not diminished with his taking the mushroom and I felt myself unable to answer other than to say, ‘Nicholas, I, like you, have taken the mushroom and now know its efficacy. It
only
alters the perception of what we see. It distorts our concept of things – trees and grass and sky change colour. Everything is exaggerated: water jugs, ravens and tree roots become a winged demon with a long tail, the bread we took to eat becomes a rising cloud, and the fish changes to play a different part in this mushroom-induced vision. Don't you see?' I pleaded. ‘It is simply a thing of the mind! It is
not
a miracle
or
a message from God.'

But Nicholas remained unconvinced. ‘Sylvia, you saw only coloured trees and well explain the reason for the devilkin, but it was not the same with me. I witnessed a miracle. Christ Jesus appeared before my very eyes. “
Suffer little children to come unto
me
,” He commanded, then told me to preach, to lead the children to salvation. If it was only a trance then why could I afterwards find words in my mouth I'd never summoned before? Words such as “Jerusalem”, words of God and the way of repentance and salvation, words that children can understand, when previously they've ignored the sermons and the threat of hellfire and eternal condemnation when these words are spoken by a priest or bishop or even archbishop?'

I thought for a moment, trying to find another way to explain what had happened to Nicholas. ‘Nicholas, you have
always
been a leader. The street children have
always
done your bidding when they would heed no other person. It is something you have within your character. Moreover, you wish to become a priest and have heard a thousand sermons, priestly words planted in your mind.

The trance that first time, it may well have moved a block in your mind. Now all those priestly words and God's messages that snuggled, hidden in your head since childhood, are made available and are on your own tongue with your particular translation and expression. That is what the magic mushroom
can
do! Sometimes they remove these blocks, these fears that we cannot do what we wish to do.' In the end I was well pleased with this explanation. The lessons in reasoning I was receiving from Brother Dominic were, I felt, beginning to work.

Nicholas, as he always did, dwelt upon my words for several moments before answering. ‘Then why do I hear Satan's voice when I wish only to listen to the words of Jesus?' He did not wait for me to reply. ‘Why when I take the mushroom does the voice of Jesus return to guide me?'

My confidence in reason and the manner in which I had established my previous explanation now found no answers – I had no way of explaining why taking the mushroom would banish the devil and restore the voice of Jesus. ‘I don't know,' I said, my voice flat. ‘But I feel sure there is some simple explanation. Perhaps it is your expectation, something your mind wants to hear.' But I could see he remained unconvinced, as I was myself.

‘Verily there is an explanation, Sylvia,' he said, looking directly at me. ‘I am chosen to greatness by Jesus and the devil would tempt me. It is as simple as that. Satan is sent by God to test my faith. To see if I am worthy or not. When I wish to know what Jesus wishes me to do He has given me the magic mushrooms to chase away the devil and his attendant demons and to restore His presence.'

‘Nay, Nicholas, it was I who showed you them.'

‘Aye, but God who used them not on thee, but on me!' he replied emphatically. ‘You saw coloured trees and created from one thing another in your mind, but I came face to face with our Saviour.'

‘Who have you told of this?'

‘Thou art the first and only.'

‘Not Father Hermann?'

‘Nay!'

‘Have you prayed upon it?'

‘Often.'

‘Nicholas, you are fourteenand may do as you have alwayswished.' I placed my forefinger under his nose and rubbed. ‘There is some evidence of hair under your nose, a sometime moustache!' I laughed, attempting to lighten the conversation. ‘You are now a man. Will you now enter a monastery and prepare to take holy orders?'

‘If that is God's wish,' he said seriously, not smiling at my little joke. ‘But I think not. Our Lord has even greater plans for me.'

‘Greater? What could be greater than serving Him? A priest, a servant of God?' I asked, slightly shocked, thinking perhaps that my stories of my treatment at Disibodenberg may have caused him to change his mind.

He looked at me steadily, then shrugged. ‘I am
already
a servant of God, Sylvia. I preach to more children than may be contained in St Mary's and St Martin's together. Jesus has plans greater, then . . .' He did not explain further.

‘Greater, then what?'

‘Never mind, you'll see when the time comes,' he said, dismissing my question.

‘Will you continue to preach to children?'

‘That is my calling,' he replied. ‘“
Suffer little children to come
unto me
.”'

That was the trouble with me. I simply couldn't accept that Nicholas was truly blessed, a child prophet or mystic with a purpose ordained by Jesus Himself. Father Hermann would have no trouble accepting this evidence. Given half the chance I knew that the good priest would equally embrace the mushroom and name it Christ's glorious potion or some such thing in order to accommodate it within his faith. Without even knowing about the magic mushrooms he had declared the tiny cave where Nicholas's vision had taken place a holy shrine. I was told that people were already visiting it. Why was I consumed by doubt when others were so eager to believe?
Just one miracle, Lord, show me just one
miracle
, I begged daily while praying.

I wanted so badly to believe, to renounce doubt and to embrace faith, to accept as others did without questioning. But my mind refused. It was I who had the block that must be removed but I knew it would not come about by taking the magic mushrooms. They could only create distortion – objects and things seen otherwise than the way they truly were. Whereas what I needed was the opposite – things seen otherwise that were shown to be the truth. I wanted a miracle shown to me that I could not explain.

I set myself conundrums that I tried to solve. For instance, when a ploughman is struck by lightning the people cry out that it is the wrath of God, that His fiery hand has descended from heaven to punish the ploughman who has dared to blaspheme. But when the ploughman's ox is struck by lightning, how may a beast become guilty of blasphemy? Does God punish an ox for resisting the yoke? Or if a tree is struck, is this because the tree did not render shelter to a weary pilgrim? What if I rush out into the field while the storm rages and shout profanities and curse the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, then challenge Him to strike me dead? If no sudden bolt from heaven strikes me down, is this then the result of His everlasting mercy? My mind was becoming plagued with questions to which I could find no answers.

If I have not spoken much about Brother Dominic, my tutor, it is not that he was unworthy of mention, far from it, he was the most learned soul I had ever met, more even than Master Israel and Father Paulus put together. He lived only for learning and was over seventy years old and dry as an old stick with joints that ached constantly, so that he seldom moved from his cell. He did not taste the food he ate, nor seemed he ever to know if it was sunrise or sunset and only set his time by my arrival. ‘Oh, you have come, Sylvia? It must be afternoon. Let us begin then.'

His interest in me was only to see if I was worthy of receiving knowledge. His hands were too crippled to continue as a scribe and the thoughts and ideas that came to him he could no longer write down. By this time my calligraphy was passable, though I would never conquer this skill well enough to write and illuminate manuscripts. So, in his mind I became neither male nor female, nun, monk, peasant or noble, not even a scholar, but simply a container, an empty vessel that he must fill and which he must make sure does not leak, so that what he knew might be passed on accurately. And what he knew most about was the power of reason. He would say to me, ‘Child, understand, the ability to doubt and to question is what makes us divine. The ability to reason, to find an explanation for why things are, this is God's greatest gift to us.'

Sometimes, when he became lost in thought, I would sing to him and while he never remarked upon my voice, tears would begin to flow from his rheumy eyes and so I had this small consolation that I was, in some meagre way, paying for my lessons. On other occasions I would tidy his cell, as he would not allow anyone other than me to enter it, not even the monk who was supposed to supervise our time together, though if truth be told the monk soon became so bored with my regular tuition that he went about other duties. Food would be left at the door and I would make him eat. If I did not fetch it, it would remain uneaten. It was customary for me to fetch his noonday meal upon arrival at the monastery. Often the food to break his fast in the morning would still be untouched when I brought his midday repast. I would make him take sustenance, then wash his face and hands before we would begin my learning.

My lessons always began with the same injunction. ‘They would kill my knowledge!' he'd exclaim, pointing to the dusty manuscripts that lay piled beside his bed and along the walls and in towers on the floor. ‘So, we will prevent them, eh, Sylvia? They cannot crawl within thy head.' Then he'd cackle, ‘Come, child, let me fill your empty vessel!'

He'd send me to the library to fetch a text and when I returned he'd grab it and hug it to his chest. ‘It must never again leave here, we must keep it safe, nobody must take it, they will destroy it, burn it, the words, my words, will be consumed in the devil's fire!'

‘But you allow me to take them to the convent,' I'd once teased him. ‘What if I should not return them?'

‘Nay, child, you do not take them
out
, you take them
in
. What goes into the mind is never lost. You shall be my vessel, my repository. But
they
will take them and without reading what they contain they will burn or bury them as they did in Rome to all my work.'

The first time he talked of the treatment of his work by Rome, I protested. ‘But, Father, are you not known to be one of the wisest scribes in Christendom? You have written missives for His Holiness. Why would they burn or bury your work?'

He gave me a wry smile. ‘Aye, my importance to the Pope is so great that he banishes me to a tiny cell in a Benedictine monastery in Germany and declares my penance is that I should never leave this place. Do you see his papal couriers hastening to deliver his instructions? Or the horse champing at the bit as his rider waits to take my missives to Rome? I am known in Rome as Doubting Dominic. What I have written about is the right of all Christians to doubt. Alas, the Church in Rome cannot tolerate the right to doubt. It insists that all things are achieved by faith and all God's truth is unequivocal.'

‘But, Father, is it not so? God's truth
is
unequivocal!'

‘Aye, child, and we must accept this on faith, but the very essence of faith is doubt. Faith can only exist if there is first doubt – the one cannot exist without the other. It is this that most turns Rome against me. They would treat religious faith as if it is beyond doubt. They teach that faith is knowledge when it is
only
belief.'

‘So what you are saying, Father, is that faith, not reason, makes us believe that as Christians we have an immortal soul?'

‘Ah, the immortal soul? Well done, my child, it is this concept of the immortal soul that has corrupted the word of God and causes us to embark upon these endless holy wars. The word of God tells us we shall not kill – “
Vengeance is mine . . . saith the
Lord
”. So that we may justify a crusade and still obey the word of God, the Church declares that the infidel does not possess a soul. Now we may with impunity and in God's name kill anyone without a soul – they are, after all, no different to animals.' He leaned back and spread his hands. ‘But I most sincerely doubt that this is the will of God.'

Much of what Brother Dominic said in these lessons was to take me many years to absorb. I was young and he beyond seventy, and his reasoning often left me confused and not a little shocked. The idea of the crusades, a holy war that we had waged upon the infidel for the past hundred years, not being God's will was incomprehensible. Or the notion that we may doubt and still be Christians was, at that age, not possible for me to accept. So much of what I heard him say seemed heretical and I dared not speak of it to anyone else. I recall on one occasion the subject of miracles came up.