A few faces peered out from the narrow windows of the houses, for the night was so silent, and so frozen and hard the ground, that the wheels groaned as if they supported the weight of an army.
Many crossed themselves as they saw that phantasmal apparition advancing beneath the light, persistent snow, through the white streets, across black bridges; others swore that the shadow of the carriage, the beggar and his guide, and their tottering old nags did not reflect in the motionless waters of the canals.
They stopped before the great gate of a community of Beguines. Aided by the boy, the blind beggar descended and knocked softly at the door, repeating over and over: “Pauperes virgines religiosas viventes…”
Snow covered the heads and shoulders of the wretched pilgrims; finally they heard the scraping sound of footsteps approaching the other side of the door, and a woman’s voice asked who it was disturbed the peace of this place in that profane hour, saying they could offer pilgrims nothing here, for the community was under a papal interdiction and such grave censure prevented them from celebrating Divine Offices, administering Sacraments, or burying in holy ground … I come from Dalmatia, said the blind mendicant; the gypsy of the tattooed lips sent us, added the boy; they heard the sound of other feet, the hissing of awakened geese; the door opened, and more than twenty hooded women in gray wool tunics, veils covering their faces, observed in silence the entrance of the creaking cart onto the grass court of the community.
INSIDE THE WINDMILL
They say that barely three years ago the same cart was dragging along across the fields of La Mancha when a terrible storm broke that seemed to crumble the distant mountain peaks, first dry thunder and then a steady, driving downpour.
The beggar and the boy in the open cart sought refuge in one of the windmills that are the sentinels that take the place of trees on that arid plain.
They turned back the canvas that covered the cart bed and exposed two coffins which they laboriously transported to the entrance of the windmill. Once inside, they deposited the boxes on dry straw and, shaking themselves like dogs, climbed the creaking spiral stairway to the upper floor of the windmilclass="underline" the wind was madly spinning the sails and the noise inside the windmill was like that of swarms of wooden wasps.
The entrance where they had left the two death boxes was dark. But as they ascended, deafened by the noise of the sails, they were illumined by a strange light.
On the upper floor an old man lay upon a straw pallet. As the beggar and the boy approached, the light in the room began to dim; the shadows rearranged themselves and certain barely visible forms were suggested in the penumbra; then they disappeared, as if swallowed by the darkness, as if they had melted into the rough circular walls of the windmill.
PEDRO ON THE BEACH
“I knew we would find you here. You are Pedro, are you not?”
The old man with the hairy gray body said yes, but that words were unnecessary; if they wanted to help him, to take up nails, hammers, and saws.
“You do not remember me?”
“No,” said the old man, “I have never seen you before.”
Ludovico smiled. “And I cannot see you now.”
Pedro shrugged his shoulders and continued to fit planks upon the skeleton of the boat. He asked the slender youth who accompanied the blind man: “How old are you?”
“Nineteen, señor.”
“How I wish,” Pedro sighed, “how I wish it would be a young man who first steps upon the beaches of the new world.”
SCHWESTER KATREI
No, said the Mistress of the Beghards, we are affected by the interdiction but we were not the cause; it was the Princes of these Low Countries who every day remove themselves further from the power of Rome and endeavor to act with autonomy in collecting indulgences, naming bishops, and allying themselves with merchants, navigators, and other secular powers, thus confusing the aims of Satan and Mercury; we have no idea what will be born of this pact …
Ludovico nodded as he listened to these explanations and he told the Mistress that he was familiar with the purposes of the Beguines, which were to renounce riches and come together in a community of poverty and virginity, offering an example of Christian virtue in the midst of the century’s corruption, although without segregating themselves from it; but was it not also true that the last Cathari, defeated in the Provençal wars, came to these secular convents seeking refuge and that the sainted women did not refuse them shelter, but here allowed them to regain their strength, to practice their rites, and…?”
The Mistress clapped her hand over Ludovico’s mouth; this was a holy place, given to intense devotion to the rules of the imitation of Christ: poverty, humility, the desire for illumination and union with the person of the Divinity: here dwelled the legendary and never sufficiently praised Schwester Katrei, purest of the pure, virgin of virgins, who in her state of mystic union had reached perfect immobility; so great was her identification with God that all movement was superfluous and only from time to time did she open her mouth to exclaim: “Rejoice with me, for I have become God. Praise be God!” Then she would again fall into a motionless trance.
Ludovico asked if he could approach the sainted Sister. The Mistress smiled with compassion. “My poor brother, you cannot see her.”
“Is that necessary? I can sense her presence.”
He was led to a hut at the rear of the geese- and sycamore-dotted green where dwelt Katrei, the Saint. The snow was beginning to melt beneath a fine, constant rain from the North. The Mistress, with the familiarity of long practice, opened the door of the hut.
Schwester Katrei, naked, sat astride the blind man’s young companion; she was shouting that she was mounted upon the Holy Trinity as upon a divine steed; her legs locked about the youth’s waist, she shouted, I am illuminated, Mother, I am God; she clawed the boy’s back, and God can neither know, nor desire, nor effect anything without me … the naked youth’s back was covered with bleeding crosses … nothing exists without me …
The Mistress fell to her knees upon the melting snow and agreed to summon the Cathari who had taken refuge in this region to a meeting in the remote forest of the Duke where they were wont to gather secretly on certain nights of the year.
Ludovico uncovered the cart and the Mistress saw the two coffins lying there.
“No, we cannot bury anyone. That is part of the interdiction.”
“They are not dead. They are merely dreaming.”
GIANTS AND PRINCESSES
The old man on the pallet in the windmill laughed loud and long; he had an infinite capacity for laughter that was in great contrast to the sadness of his features; tears of laughter ran down the wrinkles in the emaciated cheeks of this man with the short white beard and unkempt moustaches. He laughed for more than an hour and finally, his words interrupted by merriment, managed to speak: “A beggar and a youth … A blind man and his guide … Whoever would have believed…? Two persons in such condition … would be the ones who come to break my spell … to free me from this prison … where I have lain for so many years…?”
“This windmill is a prison?” Ludovico asked.
“The most terrible of all prisons: the very entrails of the giant Caraculiambro, Lord of the Island of Malindrania. What arts did you call upon to reach here? The giant is zealous…”
He requested his arms, which like him lay upon the straw, and the blind man and the youth armed him with his broken lance and dented shield. In vain they searched for the helmet he had requested, until he himself informed them that it resembled a barber’s basin.
Between them, they helped him to his feet; the knight’s bones clanked like old chains as, supported between the blind man and the youth, he was dragged to the head of the stairway. The moment his foot touched the first step, the circular area of the windmill was again illuminated; they heard plaintive voices, and frightening and guttural sounds, the latter impotently menacing, and the former heart-rendingly pleading: Do not abandon us, you promised to aid us, to free us, turn back, knight, do not leave us, you are escaping only because two corpses have intruded into our domains, you will be damned, you will be accompanied by death, see whether you can free yourself from it after you have freed yourself from us …