Apprehensions and Other Delusions Read online

  Brother Rat barked; he might have meant to cough or to laugh. “I cannot attack anyone, Brothers. I am burning with fever and I’m all but starved. You’d better give me some water, out of charity, or I will not be able to speak with you for long.” He folded his arms and looked from Brother Emmerano to me with the expression of a man who finds a corpse laid out at his door.

  “Be calm.” Brother Emmerano signaled to be brought his stool, and for my bench and table. “There is a cask of wine being brought, not sacramental wine for your absolution, which we will provide when your Confession is complete—we will use this to ease your cough. We will be prepared presently.” He then nodded toward me. “Remember all of this, Brother Luccio, for you must write it down.”

  I bowed my head and prayed that God would not take the words from me before my vellum was spread and my ink ground. “I ask that you do not speak too much more until I am prepared,” I begged, and was rewarded with silence until the lay Brothers had brought what we needed. Once I was in position, I raised my hood so that my face was shadowed, so that I would be nothing more than a cipher during the Confession. I had four nibs cut and ready in case one should fail. I nodded to Brother Emmerano and put my pen into the ink.

  “It is for the salvation of your soul that we seek to hear your Confession, Brother Rat,” said Brother Emmerano. “God has blighted your wits, or you were a tool of Satan. Thus you have passed your life here, where you can do no greater harm or call up the forces of Hell to aid you. Either way, you will need to have peace in your life before you depart it, for Grace to be yours.”

  “What does a madman know of Grace, and a drunken one at that? I haven’t tasted wine for more than fifteen years—how many sips will make me senseless, do you think?” Brother Rat asked angrily. “I am addled as it is. God will have mercy on me.”

  Brother Emmerano nodded slowly. “It is touching to know that faith remains in your heart, Brother Rat. But if you are to be spared more suffering, you must reveal all you can recall in your Confession, and thereby find absolution and redemption.”

  “So you must take even this,” said Brother Rat, as if he shouldered a great burden. He watched as the lay Brother poured out a cupful of wine from the small cask, a bariletto. It was the same wine the Brothers drank at supper, a thin young red that turned sour quickly.

  “Do not say disrespectful things, Brother Rat,” said Brother Emmerano. “It will not profit your soul to run wild this way. Your madness is beyond you, but try to govern your words.” He folded his hands and murmured a prayer before he addressed Brother Rat again. “Can you tell me how you came to be here? Do you recall what is the cause of your madness, or has God hidden that from you?”

  Brother Rat coughed and tears ran from his eyes; as soon as he could he took a long draught of the wine. He drew his smock more tightly around him. “Leave me alone.”

  “Were we tools of Satan, we would,” said Brother Emmerano. He touched the Corpus that hung around his neck. “If we were heathen, we would not bring you this comfort. But as Christian monks, we cannot abandon you.”

  For a short while, Brother Rat continued to cough between sips of wine, then lay back and stared up at the window. “If I don’t talk to you, you will only return, won’t you?”

  “We have our duty to our faith,” said Brother Emmerano. He folded his hands again.

  “Oh, yes,” said Brother Rat, his face taking on a strange light, as if the torches had made another fever in him. He tugged his single blanket higher around his shoulders. “I wish you’d left the second blanket, but since Easter has come and gone, I suppose you ...” He choked, and turned away.

  “Let us hear your Confession, Brother Rat,” said Brother Emmerano with admirable persistence. “Let us bring you the joy of Communion before you are too ill to know what is happening to you. Strive to keep God in your heart so that you will not fail.”

  “Ah.” The madman put his taloned hand to his blind eye. “You are not content to have me die, it must be on your terms.” His speech seemed to be that of an educated man when you made allowances for his teeth. He addressed Brother Emmerano with curiosity, as if his question were of nothing more than the quality of fruit grown in the orchard. “What is the reason this time?”

  “You are corrupted, Brother Rat. You are the tool of Satan when you speak in that way.” Brother Emmerano refilled the cup. “Here. Let this good wine calm your body and your soul.” He watched while Brother Rat took the wine. “Soon you will stand before God, and the Book will be open before Him. All you have done is written there. In your madness you may forget now, but then there will be no forgetting, and without mercy you will suffer the pains of Hell for eternity.” He paused. “I have heard it said that you were in Amalfi at the time of the Plague. Many who did not die of it were touched in their wits because of what God visited on that city.”

  “It was years and years and years and years ago,” said Brother Rat, not bothering to look at Brother Emmerano. “It remains only in my dreams, and they are not sweet. What happened then is between God and me.”

  “You claimed that to the Secular Arm,” said Brother Emmerano gently, “and they feared you were a heretic. You were examined by the Secular Arm, it is in the document that sent you here. Before they discovered your madness, they strove to cleanse you of heresy.” He blessed himself, in case the dangerous word would bring contagion to him. “And though you are mad, what you say is heretical.”

  Brother Rat laughed and then doubled over coughing. His thin, mangled hand shot out and seized the cup. He drank quickly and deeply. “Why not, why not?” he asked of nothing and no one we could see. With that he turned toward Brother Emmerano. “My chest rattles like a tinker’s pack and the fever roasts my vitals. Tonight, tomorrow, a day or two at most and I will be gone from here at last. I will escape you, and the Secular Arm.” He gestured for more wine before Brother Emmerano could protest so reprehensible a statement. “Go ahead. I’ll tell you what you want to know. You can’t do anything to me now; you could torture me and it would mean nothing, for I would die at once.” He leaned back on his pallet, looking up toward the diffuse light at the window. “Sometimes I can see shadows of things, just there on the wall. Other than that, I have seen nothing but monks and stones for sixteen years. Sixteen years.” Another cough rasped out of him. There were two bright places in the hollows of his cheeks and sweat shone on his forehead.

  “You know that?” Brother Emmerano asked, a bit surprised.

  “I used to count the days, make months and years of them. Now I measure them by Easters.” He closed his eyes.

  “Resurrection,” said Brother Emmerano with satisfaction.

  “If you prefer,” Brother Rat answered. He rolled to his side and looked directly at Brother Emmerano. “How long have you been here? Not in this cell, a monk in this monastery?”

  “I came here eleven years ago, from Benevento.” He waited as Brother Rat stared hard at him. He went on when Brother Rat appeared to be satisfied with his response. “It is said you came from Amalfi.”

  Brother Rat shrugged. “I have been here longer than you have.” He regarded Brother Emmerano. “Where is this monastery? They didn’t tell me when they brought me here, and”—he indicated his missing lower teeth—“I was not able to ask in any case.”

  “We are near Anagni, in Campagna. They brought you from Napoli.” He considered pouring more wine, then did not.

  “From Napoli. That was where the Secular Arm had me,” said Brother Rat. “They have prisons in Napoli, such prisons. This is nothing compared to them.” He moved his hand to indicate his cell.

  “This is not a prison, Brother Rat.” Brother Emmerano could not keep his voice even, for it vexed him to hear such things, even from a madman.

  “I am shackled and kept in a cell,” said Brother Rat. “What difference to me that it is monks and not soldiers who lock
the doors?”

  Brother Emmerano stiffened. “This monastery cares for the mad. We have none of the Secular Arm here.” He leaned forward. “You are nearing the end, but I still may have you beaten if you are taken by a demon. I do not want to bring you more suffering now, but if it is necessary I will do it.”

  “I am sure you will,” said Brother Rat softly. He finished the wine in his cup and set the cup aside. “I would not live through the beating, not now.” He made himself sit up, moving slowly as much from the wine he had drunk as from the hold of his sickness. “So I came here to Anagni from Napoli.” He put his hand to his chest as if to contain his coughing in his hands. “What did the Secular Arm tell you?”

  “That you claim to have been an apothecary and that you were speaking heresy, or so they feared.” Brother Emmerano nodded encouragement. “Go on, Brother Rat. Let me hear this Confession. Reveal all that you have hidden for so long so that you will be absolved of your sins before you appear before God.” Zeal made Brother Emmerano speak more loudly, and he paused as he realized he had raised his voice.

  “It was because of the Black Plague,” said Brother Rat after being silent for a time. “The Plague was enough to make heretics of saints and angels. It had more than enough martyrs.” He fell silent again.

  “Those are dangerous thoughts, Brother Rat,” said Brother Emmerano. “It is not strange that the Secular Arm should confine you if you made these accusations when the Plague came.”

  “I made such statements and many others,” said Brother Rat, as if he were speaking from some distance away. “So you want to know how it was. You were alive when it came—you ought to remember.”

  “It is not my memories that are important in this Confession,” Brother Emmerano reprimanded him. “If we are to record your repentance aright, then you must tell us how it was.”

  “If you insist,” said Brother Rat with a resignation that was touched with despair. “The Plague began as other sicknesses do, but no one feared it then, not twenty years ago in Amalfi. Today I suspect it is different. Today I would think that any minor illness is viewed with alarm, isn’t it?” He did not wait for an answer. “I consulted my books, because I hoped that there would be something recorded there that would protect the people of the town. But nothing seemed to help, not the perfumes, not the tea made of rosemary and moss, none of it. So I delved further, into studies in books I was told later were forbidden though they were written by a Franciscan who had been praised for his learning, for it seemed the whole world was afflicted. As my friends and my neighbors died, with black Tokens under their arms and at the groin, I dreaded that the Plague would take my family as well.” It was a strange recitation, as if he were thinking of another person, one he had never met. “I had a wife then, and her mother lived with us and our five children. Sometimes, late in the night, I think I hear them speaking again.”

  “With your family in such danger, did you not appeal to God?” Brother Emmerano demanded.

  “Daily,” said Brother Rat. “And watched as the priests died with the Host in their hands.” He broke off; when he was finished coughing, he held out his cup for more wine. “Is that enough or do you want more?”

  “Is that all your Confession?” asked Brother Emmerano, filling the cup with slow deliberation.

  “I suppose not,” said Brother Rat. He wiped his blanket over his brow. “It ought to be enough, but—” He looked at the wine in the cup. “I need what little wits I have.”

  “How did you come to heresy? Was it from the forbidden texts?” Brother Emmerano asked, growing intent to learn the beginning of Brother Rat’s madness from whence might come his salvation.

  “That is what the Secular Arm said, at first,” said Brother Rat. “They were diligent in the Question. They kept me in their charge, and many times brought me to answer them. One of the Inquisitors believed that I was deep in heresy because of what I had read, but most of them were certain what I had found there had turned my wits. For I came to believe what I had read, and I believe it to this day.” Until the last Brother Rat had spoken quietly, but now a passion came into his words. “The text was from that Franciscan who had gone to the land of the Great Khan, and it stated—” He stopped, his coughing renewed.

  “It stated what? What is this madness you believe?” asked Brother Emmerano, his eyes bright as hot coals.

  “What does it matter, after all?” He leaned back and wiped his mouth. “It is all but over. Why not? Why not?”

  “Yes,” said Brother Emmerano. “It is the Devil who urges you to silence, who makes you question the urgings of your soul to be purged of the evil that brought you to madness. Tell me what transpired and it will be recorded with your Confession. It will show that you have repented the pacts that made you mad. Think, Brother Rat, for the time when you will appear to answer for your sins comes quickly. Be reconciled to God now and—”

  “Yes, yes I know,” said Brother Rat, waving him to silence. “I have heard it many times. But madness is obdurate, and it has held me too tightly. But now nothing but death holds me.”

  “The Hand of God holds you, as it holds all the world,” said Brother Emmerano. He looked toward me. “Have you taken down all we have said?”

  “Yes,” I assured him and blessed myself as soon as I had written my response. “It is all here.”

  “And no matter what Brother Rat says, you are sworn to record it, is that not so?” Brother Emmerano pursued.

  “That is the case,” I answered, writing as I spoke.

  “It will be here, Brother Rat, every word of it, and there will be no doubt of your Confession and the salvation of your soul. No one will be able to question it.” He moved his stool a little closer to the pallet. “What was it that caused you to become mad? What thing did you find in those books that reduced you to this?”

  It was as if Brother Rat had not heard; for some little time he stared up at the ceiling. “You know,” he said after we had all been silent for as long as it would take to recite the Supplication to the Virgin, “I followed what the books suggested. I removed all the rushes from the house and set pots of burning herbs throughout the house, so every room was filled with smoke. I permitted no new rushes to be brought into the house, and I ordered that everyone bathe once a week while the Plague was in the city.”

  Brother Emmerano was outraged; he could not speak in the soft manner he so often employed for such Confessions. “What blasphemous book taught you that? You said it was a book where you learned this, did you not?”

  “A book of things learned by the Franciscan Brother in the great Land of Silk,” said Brother Rat. “A Franciscan wrote it, good Brother. A man sworn to God and Christ. He said it was thought by certain of the subjects of the Great Khan that what brought the Plague was vermin—vermin and the vermin of vermin. This book declared that if there were no vermin there would likewise be no Plague.”

  “God’s Wrath brings Plague: God’s Wrath and the sins of man,” said Brother Emmerano, his voice now very loud.

  “Amen.” Brother Rat blessed himself. “But the notion took hold of me, in my dread as the corpses were piled in the streets each morning and there were fewer and fewer left alive to see them buried.” He had a taste of the wine and set the cup aside. “The priests were in the grave with the rest of them. And you see, only my wife’s mother had taken the Plague. My wife lived, and our children were alive. So I kept to what the texts said, and made our house slaves clean each day, scrubbing the floors every morning. They all grumbled, but they lived.”

  “A ruse of the Devil,” said Brother Emmerano.

  “Very likely,” said Brother Rat with a deep sigh. “It did not last. My second son began to sweat and became restless, and that was enough to panic our slaves and servants, for they deserted us.” He forced himself to sit up properly and then he downed the cup of wine. “I might as well be drunk for this
.”

  “If you can give an honest Confession,” warned Brother Emmerano.

  “In vino veritas,” said Brother Rat. He motioned for more. “My wife nursed the boy, and though she hated all that I did, she did not stop me for she was too worried for the other children to care that I continued to scrub the floors and burn herbs once a day. She would not allow me to have the stuffing of the mattresses changed, for fear of losing the protection of the angels who guard the sick. Then she took the Plague as well.” He watched the wine fill the cup. “In the book by that Franciscan there was much about the danger of rats—rats more than mice. So I killed every rat I saw, in the house and anywhere in the town. And as the people died, there were more and more rats, or so it seemed to me.” He was agitated now, his cough returning as short, explosive interruptions to what he said. “I thought that the rats were bringing the Plague, because of what the book said. It spoke of the vermin of vermin, and rats, and so I—”

  “It is said that you went among the dead, killing rats where you found them. According to the Secular Arm you killed every rat that entered your cell.” Brother Emmerano blessed himself. “You kill rats here.”

  “They are the messengers of the Plague,” said Brother Rat with such intense feeling that for once Brother Emmerano shrank back from him. “It is madness to think that, but I have said already I cannot make myself turn my thoughts from that conviction.”

  Brother Emmerano clasped his hands, but this time he was nervous, and the knuckles stood out white. “But what has brought you to this?”

  “The rats,” said Brother Rat. “They themselves. I have made a point to look closely at them, and they are alive with vermin of their own. And if their vermin have vermin, might not there be vermin of those, and so into the realms of angels?” He pulled at his blanket, then drank off half the wine, smacking his lips with savor. “I am now never without the conviction that there are vermin so fine and so great in number that they can penetrate anything. The rats bring them.”