The Compendium of Srem

  Still apparently unperturbed, Samuel waved Diego off and then faced them. “How may I be of service?”

  Ramiro pointed to the large illuminated manuscript that lay open on the table behind Samuel. “You can first tell us what you are reading.”

  Samuel smiled. “The Gospel of Matthew. It is my favorite.”

  Liar, Adelard thought. He had seen them coming.

  Ramiro unwrapped the Compendium and placed it on the table. “We thought this would have been more to your liking.”

  Finally Samuel’s composure cracked, but only a little.

  “How—?”

  “How it came to us is not the question. How did it come to you?”

  He backed a step and sat heavily in a chair. “I collect books. This was offered to me. Since it was of such unusual construction and written in Hebrew, I snatched it up.”

  “Written in He—?” Ramiro began, then frowned. “Oh, of course.”

  “When I began to read it I realized it was a very dangerous book to have in one’s possession.”

  “Why did you not bring it to the tribunal?” Adelard said.

  Samuel gave them a withering look. “Really, good friars. For years you have been trying to find a reason to drag me before you. I should provide you with such a reason myself?”

  “You know as well as we that many conversos pay only lip service to the Church’s teachings and hold to their Jewish ways once their doors are closed. One cannot shed one’s lifelong faith like an old coat.”

  “Ah, but you forget that I am a Castilian as well. If my queen and her king want to rule a Christian land, then I become Christian. It is not as if I am forsaking the Jewish God for a pagan idol. As I am sure you know, Jesus was born a Jew. The Old Testament of the Jews leads to the New Testament of Jesus. We worship the same God.”

  He possessed a persuasive tongue, this Jew; Adelard would give him that.

  Ramiro said, “So, instead of bringing this book to the tribunal, you packed it in a trunk. For what purpose?”

  “You seem to know so much…”

  “Answer the question!”

  “I intended to throw it in the river. I did not want such a dangerous text in my library, nor in anyone else’s.” He spread his hands. “But when I reached the river, I could not find it. It was gone, as if by magic.”

  Not magic, Adelard thought. A thieving Morisco.

  “Who sold it to you?”

  Samuel said nothing for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I hesitate to condemn another man to the rack. Do you understand that?”

  “We understand,” Adelard said. “We wish to find the author of this heresy as soon as possible. If you assist us in locating him, I have the authority to overlook the time the book was in your possession.”

  Asher ben Samuel tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair as he pondered this. He knew the enormous cost to him and his family to withhold the name.

  Finally he looked up and said, “You will make the same offer to the man I name?”

  “We offer you absolution and you dare to bargain with us?”

  “I merely asked a question.”

  Adelard hated conceding to the Jew, but they had to stay focused on their ultimate goal.

  “As long as he is not the fashioner. If the book merely passed through his hands, he will not be punished. But the fashioner… the fashioner has committed heresy most foul and will pay a severe penalty.”

  Samuel smiled. “No possibility of the man in question being your fashioner. He is a simple carpenter. I doubt he can read a dozen words, let alone concoct such a fiction as you have in this book.”

  “He stole it then?” Ramiro said.

  Samuel shrugged. “He told me the book had been freely given to him, but who is to know? He has done work for me, building shelves for my library. He knows of my love of learning and so he came to me to sell it.”

  Adelard raised his voice. “The name! We want his name, not your empty excuses!”

  “The only name I have for him is Pedro the carpenter.”

  Ramiro was nodding. “I know him. He built shelves for the monastery’s library as well. He does excellent work.” He looked at Adelard. “But I agree: It is inconceivable that he wrote the Compendium.”

  “Perhaps. But he will be able to tell us how it came to him. And then we will be—as you like to say, Brother Ramiro—one stepping stone closer to the source.”

  6

  Eventually, after asking questions at a number of intersections, they came to a meager shack down near the east bank of the Rio Adaja. The river ran sluggishly here, and stank from the waste thrown in the waters upstream. Faint light flickered through the gaps in the hut’s weathered boards. Certainly no more than a single candle burned within.

  Adelard stopped in the darkness and stared at the hovel. Ramiro drew close to his side.

  “Does it seem fair to you, Ramiro, that a skilled craftsman should live in such poverty while a man who simply buys and sells lives in luxury?”

  “We are not to expect fairness in this world, brother, only in the next.”

  “True, true, but still it rankles.”

  “Pedro is a simple man. I fear the two of us appearing at his door will terrify him. He might flee and hide. But he knows me. Let me go in and speak to him alone, assure him that he has nothing to fear if he tells us the truth.”

  “Very well, but be quick about it.”

  Adelard was exhausted. He had not slept last night. How could he, knowing his aging, ailing prior was up alone reading that hellish tome? All he wanted now was to complete this step in the investigation and return to his cot.

  He watched Brother Ramiro approach the door with the Compendium under his arm, hesitate, then enter without knocking.

  Immediately a cry rose from within, a hoarse voice shouting, “No! No, I’m sorry! I did not know!”

  And then a scream of pain.

  Adelard rushed forward, almost colliding with Ramiro as he stumbled from within.

  “What happened?”

  Ramiro was shaking. “When he saw me, he grabbed a knife. I feared he was going to attack me, but he thrust it into his own heart!”

  Adelard pushed past him and looked inside. A thin man with graying hair lay on the floor with a knife handle jutting from his chest. His unseeing eyes gazed heavenward.

  “Do you see?” Ramiro cried. “See what you and your Inquisition have done! This is what I said before: The very sight of this robe terrifies people! Pedro did not see me, he saw torture and burning flesh!”

  7

  “Do we have no other path to follow?” Tomás said to the two monks standing before him.

  He had napped this evening while they were out, but then had waited up for their return. The news they brought was not at all what he had hoped for.

  Adelard shook his head. “I fear not, Prior. The carpenter’s death cuts off all further avenues of inquiry.”

  “How did this come to pass?”

  Brother Ramiro spread his hands. “As soon as I stepped inside, he began to cry out in fear. Before I had a chance to say a single word, he snatched a knife up from his table and thrust it into his heart.”

  “He must have thought Brother Ramiro was there to drag him before the tribunal,” Adelard said. “He knew he had transgressed and feared the stake.”

  Tomás shook his head. After all these years of the Holy Inquisition, the common folk remained ignorant of the process. They saw someone taken in for questioning and later saw that same person tied to a stake and screaming as the flames consumed them. They assumed the auto da fé was the outcome of every arrest, but nothing could be further from the truth. They forgot that the vast majority of those detained were eventually freed after confessing their guilt and doing penance. The instruments of truth were used only on those who refused to confess. Those consumed at the stake were usually relapsos—sinners who returned to their heretical ways after having been released by the tribunal.

  “So unnecessary,??
? Ramiro said, shaking his head. “And so frustrating. He lived alone, so we will never know where he obtained the book.”

  Tomás pounded his fist on the Compendium. “We must find this heretic!”

  “How?” Adelard said. “Tell us how and we shall do it.”

  Tomás had no answer for him.

  He sighed. “I see only one course now.” He gestured to the fireplace behind him. “Consign it to the flames.”

  The fire had burned low by now. He watched as Adelard and Ramiro added wood and fanned it to a roaring blaze. When the heat had risen to an uncomfortable level, Tomás handed the Compendium to Adelard who opened it at the middle and dropped it upon the flames.

  Tomás waited for the cover to scorch and then melt, for the pages to smoke and blacken and curl. But the Compendium ignored the flames. It lay there unperturbed as the fire burned down to faintly glowing embers around it.

  “This cannot be,” Tomás muttered.

  Ramiro grabbed the tongs and pulled the book from the ashes. As it lay unmarred on the hearth, he held his open palm over it.

  “It doesn’t seem…” He touched it, then looked up in wonder. “It is not even warm!”

  Tomás felt his gut crawl. A heretical text that would not burn… this went beyond his worst nightmare.

  “Brother Ramiro…” His voice sounded hoarse. “Bring the headsman’s ax.”

  As Ramiro hurried off, Adelard stepped closer to Tomás.

  “I am glad that Ramiro is gone,” he said in a low voice. “He has not read the Compendium and you and I have. His absence offers us an opportunity to discuss its contents.”

  “What is there to discuss about heresy?”

  “What if…” Adelard seemed hesitant.

  “Go on.”

  “What if this Compendium speaks the truth?”

  Tomás could not believe his ears. “Have you gone mad?”

  “This is just supposition, Prior. We have this strange, strange book before us. I ask you: Is it heresy to theorize about its origins? If you say it is, I shall speak no further.”

  Tomás considered this. Heresy involved presenting falsehoods about the Faith or the Church as truth. Merely theorizing rather than proselytizing …

  “Go ahead. I shall warn you when you begin to venture into heresy.”

  “Thank you, Prior.” He stepped away and began pacing the tribunal chamber. “I have been thinking. The Book of Genesis tells about the Flood: How the evil of Mankind prompted God to bring the Deluge to cleanse the world and start afresh. What if the Compendium tells of an evil, godless civilization that existed before the Deluge? What if the Compendium is all that is left of that civilization?”

  Adelard… ever the philosopher. However…

  “The Holy Bible makes no mention of such a civilization.”

  “Neither does it give specifics about the ‘evils of mankind’ that triggered God’s wrath. The Compendium’s civilization could have been the very reason for the Deluge.”

  Tomás found himself nodding. Adelard’s theory would explain why neither the Church nor Jesus were ever mentioned in the book, for neither would have existed when it was supposedly written. His idea was certainly unorthodox, but did not contradict Church doctrine in any way Tomás could see.

  “An interesting theory, Brother Adelard.”

  Adelard stopped his pacing. “If it is true, Prior”—he waved his hands—“no, I mean if we suppose it is true, then this tome is an archeological artifact, an important piece of pre-Deluge history—perhaps the last existing piece of the pre-Deluge world. Do we then have a right to destroy it?”

  Tomás did not like where this was leading.

  “Right? It is not a matter of our right to destroy it, we have a sacred duty to destroy it.”

  “But perhaps it should be preserved as a piece of history.”

  “You tread dangerous ground here, Brother Adelard. Let us suppose that the Compendium does predate the Deluge and that the heretical civilization described therein did exist in those ancient days. If the book is preserved and its contents become widely known, then people will begin to ask why it was never mentioned in the Book of Genesis. And if Genesis makes no mention of that, then it is logical to ask what else Genesis fails to mention. And right then and there you have planted a seed of doubt. And from the tiniest seed of doubt can grow vast heresies.”

  Adelard backed away, nodding. “Yes, I see. I see. Indeed, we must destroy it.”

  He didn’t have to explain to Adelard that questions had no place where faith was concerned. All the answers were there, waiting, no questions necessary. Questions, however, though a necessary part of philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge, were toxic to faith. If one feels the need to question the Faith, then one has already fallen from grace and entered the realm of doubt.

  Tomás was well aware that every thinking man contended with doubts about some aspect of the Faith from time to time. He had experienced one or two himself during his middle years, but he overcame them long before he was appointed Grand Inquisitor. As long as a man confined his doubts to his inner struggle, they did not fall under the authority of the Holy Inquisition. But should that man communicate those qualms to others for the purpose of infecting them with his uncertainty, then the tribunal stepped in.

  “You have an inquiring mind, Brother Adelard. Be careful that it does not lead you astray. And see to it that our discussion here goes no further than this room.”

  “For certain, Prior.”

  Ramiro returned then, puffing from the exertion of hurrying his portly frame to the basement two floors below and back up again with the burden of the heavy, long-handled ax.

  Not all recalcitrant heretics were allowed the cleansing flame of the auto da fé. Some were simply beheaded like common criminals. The ax was stored below and its wide cutting edge kept finely honed.

  “Shall I, Prior?” he said, approaching the Compendium where it lay open on the hearth.

  Tomás nodded. “Split it in two, Ramiro. Then reduce it to tiny scraps that we may scatter to the wind.”

  Ramiro lifted the ax high above his head. With a snarl and a cry, he swung it down with all his strength and struck the Compendium a blow such as would have severed any head from its body, no matter how sturdy the neck that supported it. Yet, to Tomás’s wonder and dismay, the blade bounced off the exposed pages without so much as creasing them.

  “This cannot be!” Ramiro cried.

  He swung again and again, raining blow after blow upon the Compendium, but for all the effect he had he might as well have been caressing it with a feather.

  Finally, red faced, sweating, panting, Ramiro stopped and faced them.

  “Surely this is a thing from hell!”

  Tomás would not argue that.

  “What do we do?” Ramiro said, still panting. “Asher ben Samuel said he was going to throw it in the river. Perhaps that is the only course that remains to us.”

  Tomás shook his head. “No. Not a river. Too easy for a fisherman’s net to retrieve it from the bottom. The deep ocean would be better. Perhaps we can send one of you on a voyage far out to sea where you can drop it over the side.”

  Ever the philosopher, Adelard said, “First we must make certain it will sink. But even if it does sink, it will still be intact. It will still exist. And even confined to a briny abyss, there will always remain the possibility that it will resurface. We must find a way to destroy it.”

  “How?” Ramiro said. “It will not burn, it will not be cut.”

  Adelard said, “Perhaps I can concoct a mixture of elements and humors that will overcome its defenses.”

  Elements! An idea struck Tomás just then—why hadn’t he thought of it before? He pointed to a small table in the corner.

  “Adelard, bring the holy water here.”

  The younger man’s eyes lit as he hurried across the room and returned with a flagon of clear liquid. Tomás rose slowly from his chair and approached the book where it lay on the heart
h. When Adelard handed him the unstoppered flagon, he blessed it, then poured some of its contents onto the Compendium…

  … to no effect.

  Angered, Tomás began splashing the holy water in the shape of a cross as he intoned, “In Nomine Patri et Fili et Spiritus Sancti!”

  Then he waited, praying for the holy water to eat away at the pages. But again… nothing.

  A pall settled over him. Had they no recourse against this hellish creation?

  “Good Prior,” Adelard said after a moment, “if I could take the tome and experiment on it, I might be able to discover a vulnerability.”

  Tomás fought a burst of anger. “You seek to succeed where water blessed in God’s name has failed?”

  Adelard pointed to the Compendium. “That thing was fashioned from the elements of God’s earth. I know in my heart that it can be undone by the same.”

  Could philosophy succeed where faith had failed?

  “For the sake of the Faith, let us pray you are right.”

  8

  Tomás did pray—all that night. And in the morning, when he stepped into the hall outside his room, an acrid odor assailed his nostrils. It seemed to issue from Adelard’s workroom at the end of the hall. He approached the closed door as quickly as his painful hips would allow and pulled it open without knocking.

  Inside he found Adelard holding a pair of steel tongs. The gripping end of the tongs suspended a glass flask of fuming red-orange liquid over the Compendium. The Compendium itself rested on the tile floor.

  Adelard smiled at him. “You are just in time, Prior.”

  Tomás covered his mouth and nose and pointed to the flask. “What is that?”

  “Aqua regia. I just now mixed it. The solution will dissolve gold, silver, platinum, almost any metal you care to name.”

  “Yet the simple glass of its container appears impervious.”

  “Glass is not metal. But the Compendium is.”

  Tomás felt his hackles rise. “This smacks of alchemy, Brother Adelard.”

  “Not in the least, Prior. Aqua regia was first compounded over one hundred years ago. It is simply the combination of certain of God’s elements in a given ratio. No spells or incantations are required. Anyone with the recipe can do it. I will show you later, if you wish.”