Rapture

by Emily Maguire

Genres: Medieval; Medieval Romance; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery.

So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law - and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful (and deadly) currency.

And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known - and loved.

Release date: October 1, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Anastasia the Patrician

 

Midsummer, her fifth year in Athens. Unusually, she is attending Abba’s table tonight. It is a feast day—they have twice as many in the east—and locals hoping to widen the narrow path to heaven have inundated the community with cheeses and fruit, wine and fish. It seems every monk in the valley is around the table, crammed tight so their shoulders bounce against each other and their hands touch as they reach for food and goblets. She is grateful to have been seated at the right hand of Abba, since the most hermitic and therefore unwashed brothers are made to sit at the far end of the very long table.

Even so, the sour gaminess of men’s bodies packed together on an airless night reminds her powerfully of her first nights at Fulda. It seems an age since she was there, since she has thought of it even. At once she is with Randulf in the scriptorium as he begs her to flee, stepping over bones in Burgundy, laughing with the immensity of their shared pleasure in Marseille. A heartbeat later she is abandoning him on a church floor. The pain of it is smaller than she thought it could ever be and that is a sorrow in itself. Lord forgive me and keep him safe, she prays in the midst of the feast, wishing she’d paid attention to which saint they were feting, so she could ask for intercession.

She opens her eyes and across from her is the angel who holds Christ’s clothes in the painting to the left of the St John the Baptist altar in the crypt of the Ugesberg chapel in Fulda: black ice eyes round as the moon, skin like thrice-smoothed lindenwood, red-ochre lips and, suffusing it all, a pure and golden light. Are you here to intercede for my poor Randulf? she almost says, but then the angel stands and reaches across the table, grabs a wedge of bread and shoves it whole into his great red maw. He is as much cherub as she is unicorn.

‘Ah, Brother John, you have not met Antony who has joined our community this very week,’ says Abba, and she realises she has been staring. ‘He has the manners of a goatherd but his love of God is powerful, his hunger for communion immense.’

Powerful. Immense. Abba might have been describing Antony’s hands, each large enough to crush her skull with ease.

‘Brother Antony,’ Abba calls, ‘you must meet our esteemed brother, John of England.’

Antony pauses mid-chew. Crumbs rest a moment on his chin before his tongue—thick and wide as a bull’s—sweeps them back into his gob. He swallows and the swell of his throat sends a hot surge of blood through her own.

‘I am deeply honoured to be in your company.’ His Greek is childish, clumsy, but his voice resonates in her chest and as he bows his head in her direction she smells sweet fermenting apples.

‘It is always a pleasure to meet another who has travelled great distances to be in this wondrous place,’ she says, and his smile casts all else into shadow.

‘Not as far as you, Father. England is so distant I can only dream it.’

‘I am no father, brother, and I too have never seen England. Tell me—’

An urgent pull on her arm from the old monk on her right. He is engaged in a heated discussion about the Paulicians and begs her aid. This man, whose name she has long forgotten, always assumes the barbarian monk will support his bellicosity, always acts newly shocked that she condemns swords and fire as a first resort. He is an old man but has clearly never seen war or its ugly aftermath. That a Christian with differing views is better off headless is an easy opinion if you have never had to see the insides of a severed neck.

So, she speaks to these innocent, unworldly monks in the way her father once spoke to the men at his table, the way Hrabanus spoke to the more arrogant among his flock: she questions this assumption then that, urges this man to return to his Bible and that one to read his history. Urges all involved to spend more time in prayer. Not one of those men listening raptly seems to notice the tightness in her frame, the way she braces herself against the new tilt of the earth. If she relaxes for even a moment she will slide directly into Brother Antony’s lap.

Brother Antony comes to her hut, asks if she might tutor him in Greek.

‘Almost every other man here speaks Greek from birth. You are better learning from one of them.’

‘Grammar then. Or Psalmody. Mathematics or . . . I have everything to learn. Everything, Fa—Brother Ioannes.’

‘Please, I am John,’ she says in Latin. ‘And we may speak our common tongue when we are alone. Now sit awhile.’ She gestures to the bench beside her. ‘Tell me, brother, why it is you are here?’

He looks at her with such intensity she is sliced with fear. ‘Last night as I tried to sleep, God struck me.’ He thumps his chest. ‘And though my eyes were closed I saw your face.’

‘I meant,’ she says, amazed at the calm of her voice, ‘what brought you to Wolf Mountain?’

He tells her then of his childhood in Campania, where war and hunger were the only constants. He saw his mother die of fever when he was four and his father to Lombard raiders when he was twelve. He escaped with his sister, who died days later from lack of food or perhaps disease or loss of hope. It all looked the same to him. Alone, he found his way to a monastery that took him in as a horse hand.

‘My body took warmth from the horses, my soul from the chanting of the monks. I worked ten years to be allowed to enter the monastery proper. I had just begun my noviciate when the Saracens raided. Again, I survived through God’s grace, escaped to Crete, made my way to Thessalonica doing what I could to earn bread and passage. What I must.’ His voice is heavy with grief and shame and she wants to kiss his forehead and offer forgiveness for whatever sins he committed to survive.

‘It was there I heard of this place where all men are welcome so long as they have a heart for God. I came at once and I will never leave. This is my home until the Lord takes me.’ His eyes are locked on hers as though she is this place he speaks of. As though they together here under this tree are the home he has found. He says, ‘Tell me what your journey has been, Brother John.’

She tells him all, leaving out only the fact of her disguise and carnality of her friendship with Randulf. She tells of the pagan mother killed by birthing her, the English priest who raised her and the earthquake that took him. The friend who found her a place at his abbey despite her lacking the funds or lineage. The fever that spread through that place and the decision to leave. The hunger and horror of the journey. The storm which spared her life at sea. The way she continued on, despite not knowing or much caring, some days, which side of death she lay upon.

‘Ah,’ Brother Antony says. ‘This is why God has drawn us together so powerfully. You too know what it is to wonder why you are still here while all those you love are gone to Christ.’

‘Yes.’ She places her hand where the boar failed to end her. ‘Perhaps we are supposed to help each other, Brother Antony, to find the answer.’

A typically sultry night and the younger men are sprawled on the grass while she and some older monks talk around the table. A glance to the side and there is Antony, his attention not on his fellows but resting hotly on her ankles. Her mind floods with images of what might happen were she to keep him here tonight, reveal her true form. His fevered excitement, the boundless, animal hunger. Him speaking shock while he rides her to a lather.

And then he would kill her for it.

Or he wouldn’t and that might be worse. She cannot bear to start over again, alone and afraid.

She resettles her robe to fully conceal her ankles. Is careful not to spare Antony a glance for the rest of the night.

—

Days later, his arm brushes against hers as he leans across the table for more wine and her mind floods with images of what a more deliberate touch from him might achieve. That night her sleep is stopped not by horrors from the past but pleasures to come. She rehearses telling him the truth. Or pretending a miracle. Or pouring strong wine down his throat until he cannot tell the difference between man or woman. Or, oh, she knows well some carnal acts that would not require her to reveal herself, but even in her fevered mind such attentions only increase her desire to have him know her fully.

When finally she sleeps she dreams of Randulf on the banks of the Rhine, both of them naked in the mud and the reeds. They kiss and writhe and bite, and as she is about to reach the moment of ecstasy she wakes.

Randulf warned her of this. It is better not to know and so be unable to imagine. To want.

You holy fool, she hears God scoff. As though the Bible has not been telling you this from the very first!

But my Lord, she says, if it is so dangerous to know why begin the telling at all? Why make the fruit if not for us to eat?

Brother Antony by her side under the pine. Her feet tucked carefully beneath her, her robe arranged so that nothing but the tips of her fingers are exposed to the air. Her companion takes no such care; sits lazily with his back to the trunk, his legs stretched in front. The tops of his feet dark as the earth, his calves bursts of white light, drawing her gaze.

He is talking of the attack on his home village, how the invaders left bodies in the open to be picked at by birds, torn at by dogs. Anyone attempting to retrieve their dead would quickly join them. He would like to know why it is God made our bodies so that, once the soul is gone, they stink and leak and swell and burst. The abbot at his previous monastery told him it was to remind the living that the flesh is unimportant, that the soul is all. But if the dead flesh is unimportant, why make it draw attention so? Why not make it dissolve like salt in a warm bath?

As though flesh still animated with the breath of God does not draw attention! As if his bared legs do not produce more heat than the midday sun!

‘Brother John, you are wiser by far than any man I’ve known. Why is it, tell me, that God has made us so?’

‘You flatter me,’ she says, thinking flatter me flatten me sink into me like a warm bath and dissolve me. ‘And in doing so you insult our Lord, brother. His creation is perfect, and if we do not see that the fault is in us.’

Antony begs forgiveness. He pouts like a child trying not to cry.

You wicked hypocrite, she thinks. You shame him for his questions while you defile him in your mind.

She could leave. Her reputation is such that she could find work in any of the schools in Athens, perhaps even Alexandria. She hears Brother Theodore muttering about George Constantine, spikily quoting Amma Matrona in the desert: We carry ourselves wherever we go and cannot escape temptation by flight.

Brother Antony comes alone in the full heat of day to bring her new wine from the community’s vineyards and she cannot tear her gaze from his long, gently tapered fingers as he places the jug on her table. She closes her eyes to pray for strength but finds all she can repeat in her mind is his name, the way she might chant it if those hands were to find their way under her robes. Antony Antony Antony she thinks or prays or yearns and then he is touching her arm, asking if she is well. Perhaps the sun has affected her. Perhaps he can assist her inside.

She opens her eyes and God shows her the man’s hands as they would appear to his namesake and blessed revulsion evicts her lust. A man worthy of St Antony’s name should be sun-darkened and work-roughened. His fingers burred and callused, bent and broken. This smooth-skinned, lazy, decadent imitator is a disgrace to his name.

‘I thank you for your gift but cannot use it,’ she tells him. ‘God has instructed me to drink only water from this day on.’

Disappointment crosses his face. ‘You are truly blessed to have God speak to you so directly, Brother John.’

‘I will pray for you to receive such guidance, Brother Antony,’ she says and does, but God has his own plans and Antony continues to come to her table earlier than the others and leave later. He continues to drink wine until his cheeks are fever red, his lips the exact shade and wetness as they appear in her dreams.

He comes to her as she works alone at the table under the window. Sits close so she can’t help but breathe his apple scent, can’t help but know the weight of his thigh against hers, the sharp promise of his elbow.

‘You will cause the ink to smudge,’ she says and he walks outside, lies beneath the stone pine where she can’t help but see him.

He looks up at her as though it hurts him to be there without her.

She stands, sits, clenches her fists between her thighs.

This is what the bird feels the moment before it takes flight.

Abba comes to her hut. They sit across from each other at her table, whose surface is scattered with parchment and ink pots and blades and pens, wax tablets and stripped-off covers.

‘I must apologise for not having visited you since your earliest days with us, Brother John,’ he says. ‘I have been remiss.’

‘Not at all, Abba. You have always made yourself available to consult and a more gracious father I could not imagine.’

He flicks the compliment away with his hand. ‘I spend so much of my time attending to the wellbeing of a very few in our community. Those among us who struggle the most in their communion or their commitment. I have never considered you among their number. Of course I heard rumours over the years. You know the kinds of things people like to whisper. He loves wine more than God. Craves adoration more than salvation. Petty things and none to threaten your greater reputation as a scholar and scribe. Nothing to alter my view of you as pious. As chaste.’

‘I am glad to hear it, Abba. I do not claim to be perfect, as no man is, but my piety is heartfelt, as is my chastity.’

He sighs. ‘Of late I have heard tales that disturb me. The detail is unimportant. Scurrilous and unfounded, I’m sure. There is something there, though.’ He taps his fingers, clawed like a crone, on a parchment she has this morning finished scraping clear. ‘A particular friendship is how the Benedictines put it, I believe. While we do not forbid such things here on principal, there are times when it becomes evident that a bond is of a nature that contradicts our mission, that threatens the souls of both.’

‘Abba, I assure you—’

‘Do you know of Anastasia the Patrician?’

‘No, Abba.’

‘She is revered in our tradition. Sainted. A noblewoman sought out by the great Justinian as a concubine. Being a godly woman Anastasia fled the court rather than lay with him. She travelled to the desert, to Scetis, and there, Abba Daniel seeing her piety and commitment, allowed her to dress as a monk so long as she behaved as one. And so she lived in solitude and service for twenty-eight years, and only after her death did Daniel reveal that this beloved brother had once been a pitiful woman.’

She does not respond. His words are drums of war and it is all she can do to remain seated.

‘I, in my imperfection, that is to say humanity, thought the example Abba Daniel set was in following the words of sainted Jerome: A woman who wishes to serve Christ more in the world will cease to be a woman and will be called man. On returning to the chronicle I saw my error. It tells us, you see, that having admitted Anastasia to the community Abba Daniel returned to see her every week. He allowed the woman to prove the words of Jerome but he did not leave her alone to do so. He did not leave her alone with temptation. Did not abandon her to her nature.’

Abba stands, rests his hand on the top of her untonsured head. ‘I have asked God to forgive me my dereliction of duty. I hope you will do the same, daughter. And you may, of course, be assured of my scrupulous attentiveness from this point forward.’

He leaves and she breathes deep, is overcome with the stench of her femaleness. It has been swelling and ripening all this time, polluting the very air around her. Perhaps Abba has known her from the start, but with the years she has become complacent. Has worn the robe of a monk while beneath it her body, cow-like, signals that it is ready for mounting and Antony—dear Lord, protect us both—is more bull than any man she has known.

Apocalypsis

 

They slip easily through the unmanned gate before dawn, are forced by the miry and untended road to move as slow as winter. The town below is more quiet than it should be even at this early hour. Randulf warned her she would find the world transformed. War and famine and disease have thinned out the towns and made the survivors wary as hares. As though he has not listened to his own warning, he mutters his surprise to find no one about in village after village that first morning. He had planned to buy them a horse in a place half a day’s walk from Fulda and is irritated to have to knock on several doors before he can rouse a man willing to conduct business.

Even then the man keeps his distance, holds a cloth wafting camphor over his mouth.

Even then the horse is not one at all, but a donkey, stringy and yellow-eyed.

‘Ah, but this is perfect,’ Randulf says, beaming. ‘What better way to travel than the way of our Lord Jesus, on the back of a humble donkey.’

The man names a price twice that of a strong and healthy palfrey. Randulf’s beam brightens. He shines light and flattery and love of God until the man is begging them to take the animal for one-tenth of his asking price and Randulf must insist on paying double that and when they leave, bewildered little donkey ambling between them, the man is shouting great blessings and asking that they return for some bread and ale in better times.

‘I had forgotten that you, too, live in disguise,’ she says when they are clear o. . .