Celestial Chess Read online

  There was no light in the courtyard, only a faint glow of candles from the chapel, where the monks were chanting their nocturnal devotions, and the eerie drone of two hundred male voices, rhythmical but atonal, halting phrase by phrase, accentuated the boy’s dread. Were the monks going to punish him for his sins? The boy looked to the stars and saw a bewildering display of heavenly riches, a celestial blizzard of blazing jewels and icy diamonds. He sensed the profound depths of the night sky and measured it intuitively. A night without sunrise, offering no home, no hope, no refuge for one as wicked as he.

  Had he always been wicked? The boy remembered his innocence like a fairy tale he had learned to love but was now too old to believe in. The Evil One had been there always, waiting and watchful, patient and inescapable. Perhaps he had not been baptized. Or perhaps the priest had said the wrong words or used water which had not been blessed. Perhaps, then, he could be baptized again. Was that why his father had brought him here?

  It was very cold in the courtyard, and his father was long in returning to him. Megin said the stars were angels, that each point of brightness in the sky belonged to an angel of God. But the Evil One had his angels as well, and they were called devils. Megin said all the devils lived in hell, except for those who prowled the earth in search of human souls. She showed the boy and his sister how certain stars seemed to form pictures in the sky—a hunter, an archer, a king, a dragon. “There,” she said. “That proves they’re angels, or where did such pictures come from?”

  The boy didn’t know, couldn’t guess; the sky seemed full of coded messages which he was too ignorant to understand. Just as he could not understand the peasants when they babbled in that strange tongue his father never used, and which he forbade the boy’s mother to use, though the peasants were her people. Megin had a language of her own. Sometimes at night she would whisper words from her secret language, as cold and mysterious as the stars.

  A door opened and a lantern spilled shadows across the courtyard. The boy’s father came out with a monk in brown robe and cowl, a crucifix glimmering on his breast. The boy’s father wore the fur cloak of a Norman nobleman, a knight’s iron helmet and great sword, leather boots and leggings. At his command the servant quickly cut the ropes which held the boy captive in the wagon.

  Climbing unsteadily from the cart, the boy felt himself taken roughly by the arm and propelled toward the open door, then along a dark gallery, nearly as cold as the courtyard and filled with the cave-like dampness of his father’s castle. They climbed a stone stairway which coiled around itself like a dragon’s tail. A door stood open at the head of the stairs, radiating light and warmth. His legs still numb and his arm aching from his father’s grip, the boy stumbled into a room blazing with candles and warmed by a roaring fire. Colorful tapestries hung from the stone walls, bright cushions softened oak benches and chairs, and a long table held the remains of a considerable feast. At the table sat a very large man, a mountain of fat in a white robe embroidered with threads of purple and gold. Had the boy known of the civilizations of the past, he might have thought the man resembled a Roman emperor of the age of Constantine. As it was, he recognized only the authority and grandeur of the man and stood humbly before him.

  “Here he is, then,” his father said. “Take him and do what you like with him. I wash my hands of the devil’s spawn.”

  The boy’s gaze fell upon the bones and crumbs of pastry that littered the table. His father had left him bound and shivering in the courtyard while he shared a feast with the enormous man in white, yet he was not resentful. He was afraid of those dark and penetrating eyes set close together beneath grizzled brows, as if pushed against the bulbous nose by the burgeoning fat of two fiery cheeks. The eyes regarded the boy with interest, with mild distaste, perhaps even with amusement. The boy had seen his father look at a peasant with that same expression before drawing his sword and striking off an ear or a finger.

  “Geoffrey,” the mountain said in a voice that was like an avalanche. “Is that your name?”

  He nodded, withering beneath the shrewd gaze.

  “And you are the young devil who befouled his own sister and murdered his cousin? God preserve me and all who dwell here from your evil.” The mountain made the sign of the cross between himself and the boy with a hand gleaming with rings.

  “If you think the risk is too great—” the boy’s father began.

  “You have paid for our risk. We know how to deal with Satan here. Stand still, boy! Has the devil taken possession of your legs along with your black heart?”

  Geoffrey set his heels together and locked his knees, trying to overcome the fear and hunger gnawing at his stomach.

  “Now, boy,” the huge man continued, “I am Eadmer, abbot of this monastery—lord and master, protector and pastor for all who live here. You shall address me as ‘Your Grace’ or ‘My Lord.’ You shall never address me unless bid to speak. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  The abbot seemed pleased. A smile creased his fat face like a meandering stream. He turned to the boy’s father. “He doesn’t look like a murderer of his own kin, does he? Perhaps—”

  “You have my word of honor, the boy’s possessed,” the knight said.

  “Save your word for those to whom it means something,” Eadmer said with a contempt that startled the boy. This abbot was truly a powerful man, for the knight stifled his anger.

  “Geoffrey,” the abbot said, “your father has accused you of foul and heinous crimes. He believes your soul has been enslaved by the Prince of Darkness. If this be true, and unless you receive the grace of Almighty God, you shall certainly be damned to hell for all eternity. You do understand the torments of hell, do you not?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Good. The gentry in this benighted part of the realm are most remiss, I’ve found, in the education of their children.” Turning to the boy’s father, he added, “He seems a reasonable enough lad, Sir William.”

  “Aye, he can be most ingratiatingly sweet and meek,” the knight said. “But it’s all a pose. Cross him and he’s a demon.”

  “Ah.” The abbot chuckled. “Rather like a Norman war lord, hey?’’ Turning to the boy again, he asked, “Do you know the story of Adam and Eve, wretched boy?”

  “Yes . . . Your Grace.”

  “By their sin, death came into the world. By their sin of prideful disobedience came lust, wantonness, greed, gluttony, disease, envy, sloth, treachery, witchcraft and all the demons which torment and defile this fallen world. Yet their sin was also, through God’s mercy, the beginning of mortal wisdom. This is what, in philosophy, we call a paradox. Cast out of paradise, wretched man consoles himself with philosophy. Such study is permitted, provided that we do not turn away from Christ, our Savior. Had it not been for your sins, you would have become an ignorant, brutal war lord—like your father here—a petty tyrant and scoundrel whose peasants no doubt pray devoutly each night for his speedy demise in one of our king’s endless wars. Perhaps you would have been happier that way; perhaps all knowledge is a curse upon mankind for its original sin. But be that as it may, you have sinned, and your father has cast you out, and now your life, your mind, your heart and soul, are all in our charge. Do you understand me, boy?”

  Geoffrey wasn’t sure. In his confusion, his eyes fell upon a square slab of wood, marked off in smaller squares, which rested on the table. On the board there were carved white and black pieces of varying shapes and sizes. The boy guessed these were the properties of a game, and he gazed upon the board as if it might prefigure the riddle of salvation.

  “Ah,” the abbot said. “I see you’ve noticed the game. Do you know what it’s called?’’

  Geoffrey shook his head; then, remembering his instructions, replied, “No, Your Grace.”

  “It’s called chess—an amusement of the heathens recently taken up by the nobility in the more civilized parts of Christendom and roundly condemned by certain pious frauds who have no
aptitude for it. It is a game for scholars—a game of logic, strategy, cunning and will. We shall see how well you do in your studies, and how humble and obedient you are able to make yourself. If you prove a scholar, we may try you out at the board. So few of the monks here have the brains to muster a creditable game.”

  “Is he not to be punished, then?” the boy’s father asked.

  “Punished?” Eadmer said. “I thought that his banishment to this monastery was his punishment. Was that not your intention?’’

  “I brought him here,” the knight said, “so that you might save his wretched soul.’’

  “Yes, and you expected us to use the whipping post as the instrument of his salvation. Well, if he violates our order he shall be promptly punished, but I have no interest in punishing him for the crimes he may have committed under your charge. We shall save his immortal soul, if we can—with prayer, fasting and hard work; with books, with knowledge, with the peaceful, ordered existence all men live within these walls; perhaps even”—he tapped the chessboard with a fat finger—“with this game. If you have objections to our methods, you may take your son away with you now. Otherwise, you relinquish all claim to this lad and he is ours to do with as we will.”

  The boy’s father shook his head. “I don’t want him back.”

  The abbot turned to the monk with the lantern. “Show the novice to his cell, Brother Thomas, and instruct him in the duties of his station and the regulations of our order. As for you, Sir William, if you are not afraid to spend one more night under the same roof with this fearsome creature you once called your son, you may sleep here before returning to your home.”

  Geoffrey could tell that his father resented Eadmer’s mockery, and wondered why he held his temper. “I’ve already wasted too much time on this devil brat. He’s yours—do what you like with him. But if you want my advice, you’ll keep him in chains for the rest of his miserable life.”

  “I don’t want your advice,” Eadmer said. “I want only the money you’ve promised us, and—now that I’ve seen him for myself—the boy you’re so glad to be rid of. Good night, Sir William, and a pleasant journey.”

  Geoffrey’s father turned and strode from the room, giving his abandoned son not even a nod of farewell. Tears started from the boy’s eyes. He stifled a sob of protest.

  “Peace, Geoffrey,” the abbot said, his deep voice expressing an unexpected tenderness. “Your father has disowned you. You’ll never outlive that brute’s ill will. But this is not your father’s house. This is a house of God, and God is more forgiving than man. Go now. Tomorrow you shall begin your new life.”

  The monk who had brought him to the abbot’s room now led Geoffrey back across the courtyard. The boy glanced up at the sprawling stars. Pictures, yes; the familiar constellations, ever mysterious and meaningless. Perhaps the stars were but pieces of a gaming board like the one in the abbot’s room.

  Alone in his cell, huddled beneath a coarse blanket on a pallet of straw, the boy saw a small fragment of that sky in the narrow slit that was his only window. He watched the stars and fought against the memories that bridled hope. Might not Satan find him even here?

  It was Megin, in whose withered crone’s body pulsed the blood of an ancient race, and whose eyes held the fanatical fire of a Christianity scorched by a memory of pagan rituals, who first told the boy of Satan. Huddled near the kitchen fire, Geoffrey and his sister, Margarette, listened as the hoarse voice cast its spell, reciting a horrid litany of things which prowled the darkness outside the castle.

  “Aye, Master Geoffrey, Satan himself wanders the moors on a night like this. Hear that wind blow? Hear it whistle round the turrets? That’s Satan’s song—Satan’s dreadful song calling for his sinners.”

  “And who is Satan, Megin?”

  “He is the Evil One, the one who turned against Almighty God and led a rebellion of the angels—and all for the vicious wicked pride of boys like you, when you refuse to study your lessons or eat what’s put before you. Satan knows that pride, you can be sure of that. He loves to see that pride in you as he waits for a chance to make you his own. Even now, out there on the moors”—the wind howled again in the castle tower—“he’s waiting.”

  Margarette’s eyes glistened in the firelight. “But what will he do to Geoffrey if he catches him?”

  ‘‘You must pray to the Lord, my children, pray that you’ll never find out. There is a fiery pit prepared for them the devil makes his own—a place of agony where sinners burn forever, though their flesh turns as black as ashes. There’s no escaping that fire once Satan takes your soul.”

  And on windy, howling nights slender Margarette would leave her bed and creep across the big room where all the children slept together, trying not to wake her cousins but crouching at Geoffrey’s side and whispering, “Brother—brother, I am frightened. Do you think Satan’s up in our tower now?”

  And holding her cold small body, caressing her back and arms, Geoffrey would feel strong and brave, and he would hold her close until her shivers stopped and call her “little sister,” and his pallet would become a snug warm nest for the two of them. Until one night . . .

  “Geoffrey, what’s this? Oh, my brother, what’s happened to you?”

  Geoffrey knew but feared to tell Margarette, for he had seen Carn, the gamekeeper’s son, extract from his britches the stiff awful thing with its pink, raw-looking bulb, which at first Geoffrey mistook for a serpent or some other creature not a part of Carn himself, then recognized for what it was only when he saw the boy caress and stroke the staff until it burst with milky venom. Carn offered to take Geoffrey’s own thing in his filthy hands, but Geoffrey ran away, back through the woods to the castle gate and through the gate to his hiding place behind the stable. And a few days later, riding with his father across the fields and coming upon a peasant girl cutting hay, Geoffrey looked back after his father had sent him on ahead, and saw his father push the girl down into the hay and poke beneath her hoisted skirt with the thing like Carn’s, only larger and more awful still . . .

  And Satan was everywhere then—in the boy’s dreams, in his waking thoughts, stalking the drafty corridors of the castle and crying his melancholy song from out on the moors; and still there was Margarette, now twelve, with breasts he cupped in his hands as she lay trusting and innocent in his arms, and she said, “Geoffrey—no, that hurts! Geoffrey, what are you doing to me? Geoffrey!”

  And though he fought against the Evil One, temptation was unceasing. Megin watched him with her witch’s squint, sure he was already Satan’s own, and Satan himself glared at Geoffrey from out of his father’s drunken eyes. Margarette came to his bed again, and again, and now their cousins knew, and Richard, the eldest of the cousins, demanded that Margarette come to him as well or he would tell their terrible sin to the manor priest. Geoffrey found them in the stable, Margarette stretched out upon the straw like the peasant girl his father had taken in the field, and his cousin: “Me first, Geoffrey, and then you.” And he leapt at Richard in jealous rage and, beaten back, found a pitchfork in the hay and leapt again.

  The boy tossed on his pallet, twisting away from tormenting visions. The blood gushing from the triple wound in Richard’s chest . . . his father’s wrath and the endless beatings . . . furious shouting in the great hall as the clan demanded Geoffrey’s death . . . Megin’s croaking prayers and pagan spells . . . the serpent spitting its venom . . . Satan’s laughter . . .

  “O, Lord,” the boy prayed, “O dear sweet Jesus, Christ most merciful, have pity on me!”

  And in the chapel, where the monks were completing their evening ritual, a supplication was presented to the Lord in a language the boy did not yet understand, but in a desperation and anguish he already knew too well. “Defend us, Lord,” the monks were praying, “from evil dreams, from nighttime fears and fantasies. Spare us, O Lord, from pollution by our ghostly foe.”

  “The history of the Special Collections is a most interesting story,” said Dean Singer
that evening, after the string quartet had performed its obligatory encore. We were sitting in the drawing room at Bromley House, a College hostel on the outskirts of town and a favorite setting for College social life. Even ladies were allowed to attend its functions on occasion. I had my eye on one in particular and meant to have a word with her before the night was over, but at the moment I was in the grip of the dean’s desultory conversation.

  “Yes, yes, a most fascinating story,” the dean said. He was an old man with a cadaverous face and long, lipless mouth. There was an odor of musty churchiness about his person, and the port he was sipping seemed to have gathered into two bright purple patches on his lean cheeks. One wondered if he was consistently capable of making perfect sense. “I suppose you’ve heard that story, Fairchild . . .”