Friar Benedict had become saturated in the ancient images of demons and creatures that shudder between fiction and the accounts of worthy travelers who had ventured to the far side of the world. He had sought out every picture in the monastery’s library and read every scrap of text related to them, but it was not enough. Not enough to explain what he had witnessed firsthand in the kitchen. Surely this was proof of the heresy that he so feared: A new race of horrors had procreated from the paintings of one disgusting artist’s imagination. His knowledge told him that such a thing was impossible, but his instinct gnawed at his curiosity, or was it the other way around? He was wise enough to listen to all the rumors about the recent paintings that had been made in the proximity of his home, and he decided that he had to see one for himself to confront and understand this work. It would take a pilgrimage of a week or more to reach the closest one. And he would need to take a sturdy companion to support his determination to lay eyes on one of the fabled “masterpieces.”
The consuetudinary could wait. There might be a new level of scholarship knocking on the wooden door of his cell. So with great fortitude, he confronted the abbot and made his request to go on the journey and take Dominic with him.
The relationship between Benedict and Abbot Clementine was at an all-time low, although it had never been more than mildly amicable. The old monk’s legendary scholarship and his accepted seniority in the monastery proved to be a vexing sore point. From the moment he first arrived as the new abbot, the younger Clementine had felt his authority being undermined by Benedict’s questions and by his over-watchful eye. The abbot had done all he could to marginalize Benedict’s influence and to keep his acrid curiosity as far as possible from his own esoteric research, but their meetings and confrontations were inevitable in the confines of the abbey and during the commitment to shared prayer. He also had the same disparity with time, always moving on to the next subject, the next of period of the day, which frayed and irritated him, making him impatient with the ponderous Benedict.
So a formal meeting was the last thing either man wanted. The abbot barely listened to the pedantic, slurred words of the old man, until he explained he was asking for a leave of absence.
Benedict had just begun his careful and detailed explanation of his journey to witness an actual painting when the abbot, who had closed his eyes, interrupted. “And when do you plan to leave?”
“Why, I, eh…was thinking…”
The abbot opened eyes that were brimming with heavy, piercing annoyance.
“Soon, so that I may be back for Lent,” Benedict managed to conclude.
He then listed the duties to which he would be anxiously returning, but Clementine’s mind was already elsewhere, and Clementine ignored Benedict until he asked another favor.
“Because of my years and recent tests of endurance, I would very much like to take Friar Dominic with me to assist with my studies and to extend his cultural knowledge of sacred images.”
Benedict was unaware of the abbot’s change of posture. He had shifted into a suppressed gleeful stiffness and was almost smiling. Getting rid of this cantankerous nuisance at this time was a great gift. Clementine’s clandestine planning had been meticulous. The arrival of a new Blessing had been designated for the beginning of Lent. He had to be first to speak with it, to become the prophesied one to whom the Oracle would cleave. He would need time alone with it before its internment as an anchorite. This would have to take place behind closed doors, locked protocols, and forbidden prayers, beyond the prying eyes of anyone in the monastery, especially Benedict and all who backed him.
The abbot shook himself out of his reverie and turned his full cunning and concentration, and his gaze, on Benedict, which silenced the monk instantly.
“A most beneficial and illuminating project. I will send you my consideration very soon. Thank you for your time.” And with that the abbot was up and out of the room before the old man had risen from his knees.
“In days or weeks?” Benedict snarled under his breath, but his assumption was wrong—he had his answer within two hours, along with a further suggestion from the abbot that he must not feel the burden of his tasks at this busy time of the year. Others would be told to fulfill his duties so that these important studies abroad might be given more concentration. The old man scratched his head and wanted to feel a sense of honeyed triumph, but the cankerous alum of deceit prevailed.
The next morning they started to prepare for their journey, Benedict glowing in the reluctant sin of appreciation. The monks knew very little of the lands that existed beyond the circle of towns and villages huddled in an intimate cluster around the base of Das Kagel. But everybody knew there were only three roads out—the spiral road up over the mountain, the seaward track to the east, and the inland road to the northwest—and most shuddered at the thought of taking any of them. The eastern coastal road was easiest to follow, keeping to the shore for many miles before it found a valley and gently climbed north. The only problem was that all manner of foreigners and brigands were continually washing up on its beaches. Worst of all, it skirted the Eastern Gate and all that lay beyond it. The inland road, however, was tough, steep, and barely populated, although it was a more direct route to the north and its cities of treasure. Benedict, with the wisdom of his years, chose the ocean road.
He also had been reading more about the paintings of this Hieronymus Bosch, but he could find little information about the man himself. His rucksack was now heavy with notebooks. This was not Benedict’s problem, however, because it was Dominic’s job to carry the cumbersome pack. It was the price of the education he would receive on their journey.
The artwork was owned by Caspia Nassau, the third son of one of the abbey’s greatest patrons. The families Van Bronckhorst and Van Bosschuysen were said to have originally owned the painting. It had been part of a commission to make three works of art that would dignify the wealth of their mercantile kingdom. Disagreements, conflicting canons of taste, and religious bias within the famous clan had caused the triptych to be broken up and the paintings separated. The left panel, known as The Nassau Depiction, was hanging in the chapel of the southernmost stronghold of the family’s realm.
Benedict had been scrupulous in his studies and note-taking, copying the few maps describing the passage to the distant citadel. He had heard much about the richness and grandeur of that sin-drenched place, and he knew his companion would have never seen anything like it. Wealth and loftiness of this proportion could contaminate a young mind such as Dominic’s. He would be subjecting the young monk to a world that most from under the mountain could never imagine, and to this purpose, the old monk made their journey longer and harder than necessary. He told the boy it was a holy duty, a mission.
It was his obligation to educate and temper Dominic, as well as to take advantage of his youth and strength, which he would do without a moment’s consideration for the hardship of those duties. Benedict also wanted to use the boy’s innocent eyes, to appropriate his perception in the translation of the painting. He would be the litmus paper that would classify and gauge the occulted power inside this mythical composition. Benedict was growing a holy determination to dissect the process and glamour of the picture, and therein find its means of influence over the imagination of all who witnessed it. He, too, would sharpen his resolve on the troublesome road toward the confrontation. Every hour of every day brought the two pilgrims closer, and the minor delays and necessary diversions that slowed their passage ripened the old monk’s enthusiasm and irritated his anxious heart.
Their passage to the painting had its own volume and momentum, and Dominic in his old age would often tell a lurid tale of all manner of demonic and queer folk that he and his sainted master met on their pilgrimage. Even though the incidents in the abbey were far worse, Dominic had taken an oath of secrecy about them. The most vivid and unlikely encounter was on a lonely crossroads with Veronica the Gibbōsus, a three-quarter werewolf of blurred origin and gender. Rolling up his sleeves and baring his chest to show the wounds received during the alleged encounter, Dominic would often insist on telling and retelling the tale until he found somebody who would believe him. Such stories would have been wasted on Presbyter Cornelius, a high-ranking academic of the fine arts. It was he who had given them grudging permission to view the painting, and under his decree, all the clergy, merchants, scholars, and noblemen who were given access to the great painting were expected to show decorum, restraint, and cleanliness. When Friar Benedict and his novice showed up at the fortified gate ragged as tramps, they were instantly shooed away.