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And sometimes it seemed that after these tumultuous moments, I would see those people following me, spying upon me more than before. Of course I faulted myself for imagining it, but the longer I thought of all this, the more strange my life became.
Then there were times when I betrayed my nature in a particular and spontaneous way. I loved the taste of milk. The Devil was always tempting me with visions of women's breasts. Even during Lent I had to have milk, and I could not endure the fast, and the breaking of the fast for milk was my worst sin. I sometimes grasped handfuls of cheese and ate it. Any soft food was delicious to me, but the craving for cheese and milk was especially bad.
Once I wandered into a field filled with cattle. It was sunrise and no one was about. Or so I thought. I went down on my knees and drank from the udder of a cow, squirting the warm milk out of the udder right into my mouth.
When I had drunk enough I lay in the grass, staring at the sky. I felt bestial and ugly for what I had done. An old farmer came. He was in worn clothing, though neat and well mended, and his face was darkened from working in the sun.
He whispered something to me, full of fear, and ran away. I got up and ran after him, lifting my robes so that I wouldn't trip.
"What did you say to me?" I asked him.
He then whispered something hostile, a curse perhaps, and fled away.
I was overcome with shame. This man knew I wasn't a human being. And gradually from that day forward my deceit of those around me began to prey on my mind.
I saw the farmer again in the city. He saw me. I could have sworn I saw him with others, and that they were whispering, but this might have been fancy. I let it go. Then one morning I came out of my cell in the cloister to discover a great pitcher of fresh milk there. This froze my soul. For a moment I did not know where I was, or who, or what was happening. I knew only this was an offering, and that it had happened before and before and before. The glen, the little people, and one single giant among them walking down to the edge of the circle, and the offerings of milk. My head swam. For the first time in many many years, I saw the circle of stones, and the circles of figures, so many circles of figures, each wider than the other, and going on so far that I lost count.
I picked up the pitcher and I drank it down greedily the way I always did milk. When I looked up, across the monastery garden, I saw, in the shadows of the cloister, people moving who then darted away.
I think some of the monks saw this. I didn't know what to think of it. I didn't dare tell anyone about it. I dismissed it. I told St. Francis, I was his instrument, and I cared only for serving God.
That night for sure a Dutchman was following me. And in the morning I went back to Assisi, to talk to Francis, to renew my vows, to cleanse my soul.
In the days that followed, many people came to me asking to be healed. I laid my hands on them and sometimes with startling results. There was no doubt that the peasants were whispering about me. And offerings of milk began to appear for me in strange places. I might come up a street alone and at the top of it find a pitcher of milk sitting there on the stones.
A certain fact also began to cause me pain. Perhaps I had never been baptized! Unless we can assume the terrified midwife and the ladies-in-waiting had done this. I don't think so. And now as I brooded on this, as I began to try to remember all the details of the northland where I had been born and exiled, I realized that if I had not been baptized, then I could not have received Holy Orders, which meant that when I changed the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ it was nothing of the sort.
Indeed, nothing that I had done could bear fruit. I fell into a state of melancholia. I would talk to no one.
And then it became very plain to me that I must have imagined this birth in England! That nothing of that sort could truly have occurred! Donnelaith. I had never heard mention of a cathedral there, of monks of our Order. But of course for years Henry VIII had persecuted the Catholics. Only recently had Good Queen Mary restored the true church.
If my fancies were true, I had been by my own reckoning alive just over twenty years. Unless my lost childhood was just that--a history lost to the memory, buried experiences, something which I could not call back. But it didn't seem so; and the more I brooded, the more everything about me began to look suspect to me, and the more tormented I became.
Finally I decided I must know a woman. I must know if I was to that extent a man. I was burning to do it, of course. I always had been! And now I knew this was my excuse. Find out.
It was as if in a woman's arms I would know if I was animal enough to have an immortal soul! I laughed at the contradiction, but it was there, and it was true. I wanted to be human, and had to commit a mortal sin to find out if I was.
I went into Florence, to one of the many brothels I knew, where I had in fact brought the sacraments to women when they were dying, and once gave Extreme Unction to a poor merchant who had the misfortune to die in a woman's embrace. I had often visited this brothel in my priestly robes. It was not a shocking thing to do.
So I entered it now on a silent rampage. And the women came to greet me, "Gentle Father Ashlar!" for they talked to me always as if I were an idiot or a child.
It disgusted me for the first time. I walked out and into the piazza and down to the Arno and across the nearest bridge. It was crowded with shops, very busy, people were coming and going, and when I happened to look I saw a man watching me and knew again that it was a Dutchman just by the look of his clothes. I went towards him, but he fled into the crowd, and I couldn't find him. He was gone in the snap of my fingers. Just gone.
I was then very weary, and finally I threw out my arms and I began to sing. I was on the middle of the bridge, and mad with fear and grief, trying to reconcile my memories with my devotion to Christ, and I began to sing. It wasn't so unusual really, the streets were crowded with all kinds of distractions at such an hour in Florence. One crazed Franciscan swaying and singing was not peculiar at all.
Gradually some people took notice, as they are wont to do. They stopped their tasks and a little crowd gathered. I was rocking back and forth, holding myself with my arms and singing, and when I looked up, very lost in my song, I saw a beautiful woman staring at me, a woman with green eyes like those of the Franciscan priest in Donnelaith, and long fancy blond hair.
Then the most astonishing thing happened. This woman lowered her veil and walked away! And I realized that the face which had been peering at me was turned to the bac
k of her body, as if her head was put backwards upon her neck. I was fascinated!
My passion was unbearable, but another even more evil excitement leapt in my heart. This is a monster like me.
I let the song die away, and spurned those who would have given me alms. Take them to the church, I said, to those who deserve them. And then I went after the woman, who had waited for me in a side street. Once again, she revealed the face, then walked off. Soon we were in a small alleyway. I was clearly staring at her back when she lifted her veil and revealed her face again.
Finally she spun round in a blur of black garments, silks, satins, velvet and jewels, and rapped hard upon the door. It was opened in the wall and as I rushed up to catch a glimpse of her before she disappeared through it, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside.
It was a narrow, crowded garden, like many a courtyard in Florence, with old peeling ocher walls, and bright flowers flourishing in the sheltered sun. Three other women sat there, together on a bench beneath a tree. All wore wide and beautiful skirts, rich sleeves, and had high bosoms which began to drive me mad. And the one who had brought me in, I saw now she was an ordinary woman! Her face was on the front of her body, like that of anyone else. It had all been some kind of illusion with the veils she pulled from her hair. Some little trick.
She confessed this to me, and this set them all to laughing so much I thought they would never stop.
I was dizzy. Suddenly these women were crowding about me and saying, "Father, take off your clothes. Come, stay with us in this garden." And the blond one, who bore the famous name of Lucrezia, said that she had bound me with spells to make me come, but not to fear, they weren't witches, rather their men were gone off to hunt in the country, and they would do as they pleased.
Their men gone off to hunt? This sounded bizarre. But I perceived the truth beneath it. These were whores, but whores free for the day, and I was the object of their desire.
"We are proud to initiate you, virgin child," said the eldest of the women, who was as beautiful as all the rest. They drew me across the tiles and into the bedchamber. They took off my sandals and removed my robes; then they flung their dresses this way and that, crying out in jubilation, and they danced about me, naked as nymphs, singing some little song. It was all a joke to them! It was all a game. They were shocking the young Franciscan, who though he had a full beard still had the expression of a child.
