I didn’t know who my benefactor was, and how much Jorge was paid for my everlasting obedience. But there was not a single person dearer to the Abbot than me among the fraternity, and there was not a single person among the fraternity whose taking of monastic vows had been delayed for so long. As an illegitimate son of a count, I was getting ready for this worldly life. To avoid being an obtrusive embarrassment to the family, I was sent to the Benedictine monastery without title to save face; unable to acquire wealth, but thankfully I was not burdened with having to take vows. Nearby, in Graben, my alleged parent’s castle towered above, aloof and dismal. Jorge used to set me on his shoulders and point at its wonders with his old speckled hand: the fortified courtyard turrets, the drawbridges lying over the moat, the gate structures, the keep, a grand citadel, appealing with supposed patrimonial pride (Don’t be under any illusion, I will not inherit any patrimony or treasures at the end of this book). Jorge wasn’t to blame for my bastard blood. Moreover, he cherished his fosterling’s talents, focusing on calligraphy, translations, and working with the manuscripts in the scriptorium.

One dark evening towards the end of the summer, a delivery man from Graben took me to the monastery on the top of the hill and handed me to the Abbot (“in a sac, like a captive Turkish kid,” as Jorge retold later) together with a purse full of gold. Since then, my birthday had been set in August, at the last roar of a lion, according to the astrological signs calculated by a young fair-haired Prior Edward, who had a pathologic tendency for magical (or so) teachings. Sometime later, during the late summer days, I was christened Anselm, and soon started to learn reading the Holy Writ. And while other boys ran errands helping the cellarer in the kitchens, Jorge took me to the Black Gardens.

Cultivated by the Abbot, the Eden was fenced off from the rest of the abbatial lands on the western side by a wall of the inky vine; future wine designated for our Eucharists and daily repasts grows here, coiling as ringlets.

I see myself lying on the ground, staring at the enameled blue sky while Jorge is tying the vines. Lily-white bushes are in bloom all around. I climb up into the deepness of a shadowy bird-cherry tree, and there, in my secret hideaway, amongst the white blossom branches, I can watch the Abbot’s every movement. Motionless, I wait till an angular shadow calls, “Anselmo!” on the Spanish way, and suddenly jump down, right in front of Jorge. We build small windmills, which can rotate in the wind, we play “one, two, three, let’s run down the hill!” and “chicky vine curls”. I watch ants and squirrels, leaves and clouds. After the summer goes through its mid fiery daze, it’ll be time to enjoy the results of our work.

“What is Our Father’s home?” I ask, flattened out on the fallen white petals, poking my finger up into the sky. “Look!” Jorge shows me the pheasants, hovering under azure dome. Then, he folds his hands like a bird’s wings flying upwards, flapping its feathers, rising, flying upward towards the sky, flying higher and higher above – above the clouds, towards Our Father’s home. Jorge loves the sky most of all.

Peter, the cellarer, has stored the clay pots ready for the fruits and berries; I gather the crop grown by Jorge. Peter holds the rough metallic barn key, the metal keeps the heat of the sun for the day; the sun is about to tumble down behind plains and lowlands, behind fields and meadows, behind their summer green sheets. Between complin and night prayer, I doze on the Abbot’s strong shoulders; sometimes he takes me to bed in my cell, and at the back of my mind, the very notion of home comfort will always mean high domed spaciousness, cold stone, and silence.

Peace is created by cold stone and silence.

Silence lives in the father’s icy chamber (Don’t be under a delusion, he will not turn up to be my real father at the end of this book). The sky looks through the elongated narrow window, giving everlasting supervision. Jorge has a bed and a chest, and there is a wax candle, and books piling up on it.

While the rest of the world smokes of tallow candles, we light our church up only with wax candles; the sacred wax, made by the sacred bees in our beehives, those bees can whisper a prayer straight to Lord’s ear. Enormous flat multi-horned lamps are lit, a bright light lightens up the dome – and I like this brightness. I am going to like it here till someone will groan that beeswax is a luxury.

“What is luxury?” I asked.

“Luxury?” Jorge wrinkled his forehead into a frown, and took me to the kitchen and hugged me. “Let brother Peter take some rest, and I’ll show you what luxury is.”

Letting the cellarer go, the Abbot opens supply chests, one after another, looks into the baked goods storage, makes a fire in the oven, as I stare at this scene fascinated.

Jorge cooks

We need white bread and leeks for a luxurious meal. Jorge slices the white parts of the leeks, putting aside the rest for a daily pottage. He puts sliced rings of leeks to simmer in olive oil and white wine, adds salt, just a pinch. At the same time, the father is toasting the pieces of bread on the open fire. When the bread is crunchy enough, the soft pieces of mulled leeks are poured onto the pieces of bread. After taking some time for the liquid to absorb the bread, a sumptuous meal is ready!

Shooting up, I tirelessly delve into all kinds of the manuscripts our library has to offer and while reading, I try on different roles from the Lives of the Saints, from the works of the ancient sages. Having seen my growing passion for books, the Abbot announced me as an assistant of the library keeper, leaving Paul the keeper, a lame brother no choice but to enroll me into his retinue hitherto vacant. This gave rise to all sorts of rumors, considering that I hadn’t taken my vows yet.

Thus, copying the texts and binding them together into books became my major activity. Also, we were taught seven Artes Liberales, and trivium of logic, rhetoric, and grammar inevitably prevails against quadrivium. And again, I filled this gap in the library, where I could find magnificent manuscripts besides the collections of poetry, describing Sectio Divina – Golden Proportion, and Euclidian geometry. It fascinated me much more than poetry. The works of astronomy – the science of celestial bodies – were kept in the adjoining hall. Prior Edward, who was the most frequent visitor made Paul, the gimpy, fleeing in terror.

I adored Jorge, who kept extracting elder-berry juice while ruling the monastery with an iron fist; who granted me an unlimited access to different texts, ruffling up my dark mop of hair not shaved in tonsure yet.

“Do you know why they call me abbot, Anselmo?”

“Of course! Because ‘aba’ means ‘father’ in Hebrew, and it is precisely who you are.”

And Jorge adored me back.

One night a pilgrim came to the monastery and stayed for lodging. He had recently visited the tomb of St. James in Campostela. He put his walking stick and a hat decorated with seashells in the corner, placed himself near the fire and began telling stories about his travels all night long. While reaching the description of a castle of a nobleman, who hosted him in Castilla, the traveler began describing the family’s crest in detail, clearly making up stories a went along. He named and combined the colors wrongly and improperly, and so I interrupted him there.

“No, it can’t be! It’s incorrect to combine sable with sinople!” I blurted out all of a sudden, and I instantly engaged all eyes.

I paused in fear.

“It’s only a symbol,” Prior Edward wanted to reassure me, though I noticed sparks of curiosity in his eyes.

“Wouldn’t you agree that a symbol is sometimes more important than reality?” I was suddenly anxious to be in the limelight, my cheeks flushed. The brethren snuggled up to one another on the benches, uneasy. “Is the Piscatory Ring, holy relics or Seal of Ruler of no effect separately, equal to personalities, who created them?”

“Since when did you become a philosopher, Anselmo?” Jorge’s voice thundered over the hall. “Knowing heraldry and speaking your mind, as if you own the place?”

“Since you’ve given me access to all the treasures of the library, Father,” I shot back.

“All right then. In that case, you’re going to Graben to purchase cereals tomorrow morning, and Prior Edward will explain to you what should be utmost in a novice’s mind.”

“But Jorge…,” I began protesting, making the Abbot seriously angry,

“Don’t you dare to address me like this! Have you ever heard of humbleness? Do you think that not taking oaths allows you to do anything you like and act as a layman? Well, hurry up straight there – straight to the world, to the market, tomorrow morning, the first thing!”

The position of the assistant to the library keeper was vacant again. And from now on, I was exiled to run errands for a light-haired magician.

Prior Edward was the biggest mystery of our small world. Born an Englishman, he was known as Edward Kelly, and he didn’t have any ears. Without ears, he cunningly concealed the absence with his long golden locks. Some impressionable minds took him for a voodoo priest and only the glory of his position protected him from explicit condemnations.

Once, when I was very young, we were all picking strawberries in the Black Gardens, and while playing I chased Edward. He approached the barn, and when I caught up with him, he suddenly slammed the door, catching my hand. I whimpered in pain as the strawberries fell out of my purple fingers. Edward, white as a ghost, took me to Jorge, and Jorge carried me to the fermery, where they bandaged my hand and I was banned from work for several weeks. From that day, the prior avoided me, whether that was due the abbot’s instructions or his feelings of guilt I wasn’t certain. He rarely approached me, avoiding to look at me with his deeply set brown eyes. He stayed away from us when we were working with Jorge in the monastery vegetable garden, and moved away from the others in the refectory and scriptorium.

And now, Edward became my guide for earthly things. Strolling along the row of stalls on the market, we looked up at a great variety of goods, eyes wide open: there were tools, such as cleaving axes, wimbles, sickles; animal skins, cross-grained leather products, and fabrics for all tastes – from rough half woolen tiretaine to luxurious drap fin. They were also selling furniture, food, and cattle.

Passaged towards the market, the prior left me to watch a festivity show of the turlupiners – wicked jokers, who turned out to be not so amusing. Edward strictly told me to stay at the show and wait for him to come back and went purchasing. In fact, he tried to get rid of me as usual. After one hour or so, watching intently the sundial on a tower wall, I heard him strolling along merrily. He rewarded my long waiting with a terracotta toy- a whistle in the shape of a partridge.

Since then, we came down to the market every week, everything recurred.

Eventually, I was very curious where the prior kept going. Following him at a safe distance, along filthy narrow streets, funny broken-backed buildings set on wooden frames filled with pieces of bricks, I saw my mentor getting into some rickety ramshackle dwelling with closed shutters.

I asked an old man who was passing nearby the house. The man looked at me suspiciously,

“A brothel, brother. You’re not supposed to know, I believe, and you’re too young, anyway…”

Having got the answer to my main question and trying to remember the unfamiliar word, I hurried back to the square, so that Edward wouldn’t notice my absence.

“What is a brothel?” I asked the Abbot first thing that evening.

After that, neither the prior nor I went to Graben again.

I was in my tenth or eleventh year when Jorge was called for some business to another town. When he was getting his things ready for a trip, he couldn’t get rid of me, as I was literally grabbed holding the flaps of his cassock, pleading to take me with him. Finally, Jorge gave up. He placed me in the cart, and the two of us set off for Chartres.

Chapter 2.
Chartres

The cart creaked and groaned with its wheels swaying as Jorge and I rode southwest on and on breathing in the scent of tired fields and dried cornstalks. Ice cold water, scooped up from a creek in the palms of your hands, opened by a ladle of prayer, with a throat full of road dust filled with silver ice. Father Jorge missed a right turn to the river several times, although, he said, he had once known every tree here. Hence, we had lost our way and stopped to take a rest beside a mountain stream.

“My eyes are not the same as before,” Jorge complained while scooping up water for the journey ahead.

Having strayed a little, we finally discovered the right road and dismounted beside the river for the second and last time.

Having set eyes on the Chartres Cathedral, I was blown away.

I hadn’t seen anything like it before. The cathedral appeared before my eyes like an arrow directing itself straight up to the sky, elegant, light, and at the same time, insanely high. The facade, decorated with sculptures, looked as if it had been squeezed by strong massive towers from two sides, covered with the finest lancet tents. Magnificent, noble and exquisitely beautiful, that’s the way it appeared to be, the true House of Lord.

“What is it?” I pulled at Jorge’s sleeve.

“It’s a beauty, it’s not for nothing that they talk so much about it,” the abbot narrowed his eyes, looking at the solemn building. “A terrible fire happened, only the under-croft with the facade remains of the old church. And those bits would have not survived, but for the Veil of the Virgin…”

“Is it housed here?”

“It is, Anselmo! That’s what saved the Lord’s House. It was rebuilt on donations. They say, the inhabitants delivered stones from the surrounding quarries…

For the first time ever I was not concerned about Jorge at all.

How impressive the cathedral was – it could just be seen as something completely immaterial, separated from this world, from people hardened in sin. All its space was striving upward so vigorously as if the cathedral was heartily sick of mortal life; that’s why it decided to give this life up for good, to be focused only in heaven.

Unfairly playing the second fiddle in my daily life for ages, quadrivium was embodied in this cathedral with its geometric and arithmetic bizarre configurations. It epitomized the divine order, and kept sacred secrets. The soul was going up into the sky, following eye motion. It was the universe, it was everything. It was the single line, which dominated over the entire world – the great and noble vertical.

It could scratch, injure, or run through me.

It struck me to the heart. From that very moment, I was convinced that I would never be a monk.

* * *

Oh, unattainable heaven, I desperately aspire to you whatever it takes.

Growing up on the earth, I join real life only in heaven. I look tragic acting on impulse. I seem to be a poet carried away by inspiration. I throw away the reality, which I hate and see – myself! – being the House of Lord, high and beautiful.

* * *

I came to the monastery quite obsessed with this cathedral.

Prior Ed was finally caught red handed during one of these evil moonless nights. I hunted him down in the Black Gardens sprinkling ashes on balls of wool and trampling the crucifixion with his feet. Suppressing fear and disgust, I tried to scare the blasphemer by using my already sufficiently low and roughened voice,

“Edward Kelly, are you calling the devil?”

He might have accepted these words at that very moment as the greeting of Satan. Whatever it was, while turning around and seeing me in the dark, his deathly white face was distorted by immeasurable fury and anger. Accepting his own defeat and most probable exposure, bearing in mind I had been close to Father Jorge, he reluctantly put the cross again on his neck, taking a few steps to meet me and uttering with a pretense of repentance,

“What shall I do to make us forget about this episode?”

His guilty slanting brown eyes were trying to avoid my glance – icy and arrogant. I had never felt so powerful before. Now I was in control with that cunning being. And there was only one thing I wanted.

“Bring me the one who can teach me how to build.”

* * *

“I have called a craftsman to restore the western part of the building,” Edward announced to Jorge when the joint prayers were over after twelve o’clock.

Both senior monks shifted their gaze at me.

“What’s up?” I pretended to be unaware.

“Get his chambers ready and provide him with a welcome treat!” the Abbot ordered and then added, suppressing a chuckle, “Don’t let him mess up sable with sinople!”

* * *

One side of the building was cluttered with pieces of wood and ladders. Walking back and forth around the monastery yard, I was vainly trying to casually run into the architect to take him to the chambers. However, he had already set himself to work, examining the wall and making some calculations, keeping away from everybody. It was then, I decided to wear him down.

“Sir! Your name is Mylo, isn’t it? Will you work with our house?” having my folded palms at the mouth, I loudly called out to the man who had climbed up the scaffolding and was carefully studying the walls from up there.”

“I will, brother, and who are you?” he looked down towards me.

“I am Anselm, a novice,” I said and grasping up more air, I lifted my head even higher and roared with all my might, “Why does the Cathedral in Chartres have such high arches?”

The man was surprised by this unusual question and decided to descend from the scaffolding and come towards me. There was his bundle with tools left on the ground. I glared at them, although I didn’t even know what to call them.

“Such arches arise due to the use of arc boutans, based on buttresses.”

“Butt… resses,” I repeated in a singing voice.

“I bet, its arches look lighter than yours. But their structure is much stronger.”

“How?”

“Blocks on the top are pressed against each other inside, but not down.”

Our conversation stopped before it started.

“I can’t get a thing, Mylo.”

He shrugged his shoulders,

“What good will it be for you?”

“Because I don’t want to be a monk. I want to be like you.”

The craftsman pursed his lips and left to untie his bundle. I stayed where I was. Once he was back, he handed me a device consisting of two sharpened sticks fixed at the top using a metal piece incurved neatly. Milo stepped aside enjoying his primitive joke, and clapped his hands.

“Done! You are like me now. Carry on with your praying.”

I threw up my hands,

“What are these things?”

“A pair of compasses and a set square.”

* * *

A pair of compasses and a set square.

I met Ed on the way to the dortǒur. I exclaimed with my voice breaking,

“God bless you, Prior Edward!”

“What’s the matter?” he recoiled.

“No, I’m serious! You have brought this builder for us. I can’t believe it, Ed. Thank you, Ed, I am really in a bind here.”

* * *

“The main rule while constructing small size churches is using a preset proportion.” Mylo started to introduce me to the subtleties of the craft. “Where walls thickness should be of a certain proportion of the interior space. You understand?”

I shook my head.

The architect took me into the yard and asked me to draw a square on the ground,

“Imagine that the square is inside the church nave, and take it as a unit. And now circle it around.”

We drew around the square clockwise, drawing a smooth line with a long stick.

“There,” the craftsman raised his forefinger. “The widest part of the circle outside the square will specify the thickness of the walls.”

And he drew dashed lines from the four points, signifying the future silhouette of the building.

I looked differently at our abbey from now on. There was also enough beauty here: capitals were decorated with figurines of human beings and animals, images of the Vices and Virtues; spirals, zigzags and other geometric patterns were carved on columns. But everything seemed to be too thorough, dull, and heavy. This solid look made me choke.

From now on, the main goal was to look lighter than the others, but being stronger structurally, like an arc in Chartres.

Mylo teaches

The whole weight had been placed on the walls before. They were supposed to be thick and heavy, with small windows. To expand the structure seemed to be impossible because of the horizontal thrust of masonry vaults giving pressure on the walls, and the length of beams installed in the floor. The church space became more and more cramped. There wasn’t enough room, and then the architects decided to use the intersecting vault – the gravity moved to the lateral supports off the walls. But it was also required to reduce the weight of the vault.

Nervures (“ribs” or “veins”) are the arches located in intersecting vaults, fixing naves. Each large square of the main nave carried two side-aisles, smaller sized on the cathedral ground plan. The walls were getting rid of gravity: the easier the pressure was on the walls and posts, the higher and sharper was the arch.

Buttresses (“counterforts”) are exterior supports, located outside the cathedral. It was them which invisibly carried the enormous weight of the vault. It is due to them the cathedral rose up to an incredible height.

Arc boutants bounded the external buttresses with the internal vaults. These inclined arches gave to the construction of the sleek, weightless look. The feeling of general elegance was complemented by pinnacles – exquisitely decorated turrets mounted on the tops of buttresses to firmly press the giants to the ground, to fix them in a stable state. Two round arches were called ogives, which were an indispensable part of the construction of a vault along with four pointed arches.

Thus, cross vault laying was succeeded by the use of ribs, and the arc boutans supported the building to make it stable. Being finally free from weight, the walls were decorated with huge colored stained-glass windows. From then on, the cathedrals became incredibly tall and dazzlingly light.

Mylo let me into all aspects of the construction plan, mentioning the stones being laid onto a small amount of mortar. They could mix everything and anything between the blocks in the past. For example, the Romans used limestone mortar mixed with ground volcanic rock or he told me that there was not so much stone in the north, so it was convenient to build out of bricks. The bricks had been big and thin, and now they were very large and filled with holes to make the burning process easier.

Mylo kept the drawings on wooden tablets – wax-coated diptychs. The waxed surfaces were placed one upon another, and the tablets were tied up securely. I meticulously copied the diagrams of compound piers, windows, and drawings required for shaping stone profiles on the church parchment.

Saturated with the initial greed for knowledge and my desire to solve the puzzle I became occupied using all my free time.

“But everything stands out from general in Chartres!”

Mylo sat down on the ground next to me.

“What does the building express? Think about it.”

“Strength. Reliability. Confidence.”

“Fine. What does the Chartres Cathedral express?”

“Challenge and takeoff! But a very… nervous challenge and takeoff!”

Mylo gave me a thoughtful look,

“And what is the reason it takes off?”

I was able to formulate the idea after a few moments,

“To turn everything material into spiritual weightless.”

“Make it simple.”

“To destroy the reality and break through beyond.”

“Where?”

I remembered Jorge, turning his palm into a flying bird.

“Up to the sky.”

“What for?”

“To the light!”

Mylo and I managed to draw a plan for the cathedral in Chartres together. Having already learned the foreign terminology, I summed up that the building was a cross with a three-aisled transept and a deambulatory at the top of the cross. “Write it down that it had been most likely made from durable sandstone,” added the architect after some thought.

“And the steeple? What is this huge needle made of?” This question was torturing me most of all.

“A log coated with lead,” my mentor shrugged his shoulders. “At least, I think so… Remember, the main thing is a masonry vault. About two or three hundred years ago, the vaults were not entirely made of stone, they were mixed from sand, lime and stone ground as in your building, for example. But now the stone replaces everything else. It’s cold and strong, there is future behind it.”

When the work in the church building was complete, Mylo collected his belongings. He left some of his tools and drawings. Finally, the architect gave advice when we were in the fratry.

“Go and learn building. With your own hands. Are there any masons down in the village?”

Edward answered instead of me,

“Yes, I know Jean. He has built half of the local houses,” the Prior winked. “I’ll introduce you to him when we go down to the village.”

I immediately lost heart,

“Jorge will never again let us go to Graben due to your whores.”

“Trust me,” Edward stated quite firmly.

A few days later, I secretly joined Jean the Builder with his apprentices. Mud appeared under the calligrapher’s fingernails. I decided to go ahead from the start and began studying the “soul of the stone”, helping masons voluntarily. I rough-hewed stone block as an initial stage at stone quarrying. Fine processing was carried out later, in special workshops, and from there, the cart went to the construction site where Jean and his team of apprentices finally polished it in barns and storage sheds.

I stayed with Jean on the construction sites for days on end, and gradually the tools became a continuation of my fingers. Being with the masons, I had started using a set square for shaping the stone. Then I got a level to check the horizontal position, and a plumb-rule to check the vertical one.

Back at the hill, after the compline, I came up into Jorge’s cell, always so spacious and cold, and read him the Gospel or the writings of the blessed Augustine at night. The Father could hardly read himself, as his eyesight was relentlessly fading. He continued losing weight, and I tried to entertain him as much as I could. I invented new illustrations for books, which I could hardly find time to copy. I carved the statue of Our Lady on Easter and gave it to Jorge. Having persuaded the three brothers to help me, I managed to erect a number of nice colonettes in our monastery and ennobled the doors, windows and bigger columns.

I could handle almost everything after a couple of years. But “Chartres’ melancholy,” as I called it, didn’t calm down. The system of light and graceful arc boutans, drawn by Mylo didn’t get out of my mind. The stone in my hands could depict anything, expressing nothing at the same time. Did this mean that I hadn’t put enough effort into it?

“How did you convince Jorge to let me go to Jean?” I asked the Prior one day.

“I read him the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians by Paul the Apostle that night.”

It began to dawn on me,

“If any would not work, neither should he eat?”

“Exactly. And then I hinted that you could start looking for a profession since the father didn’t want to see you among the brethren.”

That was what I called a little bit unexpected,

“He doesn’t want me to stay here, does he? But he loves me so much!”

The Prior waved his hand, “Forget it,” and hurried off.

I had been preparing myself for a long time to the fact that sooner or later I should leave the monastery, but I couldn’t believe that the abbot decided everything ahead of time. Being offended at Father, I couldn’t explain the course of his thoughts, and, as a result, I simply accepted the words literally. It was then I decided to stop eating.