Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback by Adriana Koulias

Author:Adriana Koulias [Koulias, Adriana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780987462046
Amazon: 0987462040
Publisher: Zuriel Press
Published: 2012-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

37

MACHAREUS

Our aggressors had constructed a gatta, a siege tower, which day after day crawled a few feet closer to the summit. Now that the French were so close, our fortress was battered day and night without pause. Our walls were strongly built but Hugh of Arcis was persistent and I knew it was only a matter of time before his shots found a breach.

Skirmish after skirmish had left many wounded, and these were taken to rooms set apart for them. My fellow perfects and I gave those who desired it the convenenza, which unlike the consolamentum could be administered even to those who could no longer speak. I worked long hours without rest, and yet I did not feel weary.

In truth, of late I had discovered in myself a boundless vigour. Even Raymon, my socio, God bless him, had seen it, and had been puzzled at the spring in my step, at the lilt in my voice and my ability to climb to the end of the spiral stairs, without being seized by breathlessness.

He told me he had seen the light in the room at the top of the keep, and asked, ‘How can you be so full awake in the day, when you seem to spend night after night without sleep, pairé?’

I wanted to tell him I was becoming full to the brim with knowledge and that it surged through my blood. I wanted to tell him this knowledge caused me to feel a peculiar love and warmth for everything and everyone. I wanted to say that I might appear an old man in the autumn of my days, but that in my soul I was renewed–reborn and that it was all due to a beautiful apparition, or girl, or whatever she was!

But I did not tell him any of these things.

Christmas came and went without fighting on either side. We, like the Catholics, celebrated the rituals of our faith; we blessed the bread and sang our songs and joined together in a communal meal. But when I looked around at my fellow perfects, bishops and the deacons of our faith, I knew that not one of them had a true understanding of the birth of Jesus, nor of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. They still saw him like a stone, over which one might step to find the Christ.

It was a cheerless existence, to be so alone and yet surrounded by so many. I knew now what Lea had meant when she said that to know a person one must first love him. How many here truly knew me? I felt like a forgery and so whenever the credentes fell to their knees to kiss my hand, I did not feel worthy of their veneration and I told Lea how I felt when next I saw her.

She was looking at the fire and did not respond or even turn her face to me. I felt I should say something else, ‘I know now what you meant that first night we met, when I told you I was a perfect.

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