John Fraser Deaderick

PRELUDE
March, 1649
The Monastery of Santa Lucia in Orfea, Rome

I awake, burning. Robe damp as sin. The planks on which I sleep unyielding as ever. The light in my cell pallid, the taper long burnt to nothing. Through the high stone window, the dim grey preceding sunrise all the colour there is. Did I dream? Yes. Scattered images, a night watchman in harlequin jerkin of white, black, and yellow. A big yellow dog. A stone bridge, wet, slippery. A man falls into deep, black water. Did I travel to this place forgotten years ago, or am I peering onto the landscape of dream?

I move the few feet to sit at the roughhewn table, trembling with cold, fever, and fear. Rome, the first city of fever, the first city of fear. I dip my hands into the basin's freezing water and splash some icy drops on my torrid face in a vain attempt at quelling the heat, but I only shiver harder. Alongside my few books and letters, papers cover the table in disarray. I order them, I study their blank faces. I spy the quill, these empty sheets before me. All the yesterdays to return to fill these pages. The fever detaches me somehow. I see from outside myself, as though I am another watching this hooded stranger. The clouded head from last night's wine helps not.

I feel compelled to tell this story, my story. This may be the Sin of Pride. Perhaps it is wanton arrogance to assume there is merit in the telling. Such an improbable story. As soon as my dulled state fades, as soon as my right hand trembles somewhat less, I will pick up the quill. Some unknown future person discovering these pages, these awkward scribblings of an aged ailing monk, might remark, "No, this be no history, but a fiction, a fable, an extravagant romance." Some person of learning might term it Dante-like as it plumbs the heights of heaven and the depths of hell. My narrative will lack the skill of that earlier esteemed exile, to be sure. The unknown reader's judgement might affirm, "This be far too fantastical, too full of the unlikely, for a history." But a history it is. Should that unknown reject this account as falsehood, so be it.

I write for myself. And perhaps I write for those who were lost, are lost, in events to be recounted here historical and true. Some written of will be known to the wide world. Some will stand apart from fame, or its dark twin, infamy. Herein I shine a light into the shadows, holding high the lantern of discovery over all.

Time. How we abuse it, as though we are its unmannerly master. Time masters us. I will attempt to make worthy use of whatever masterly time remains to me. As the dull ache recedes, the task I have set for myself becomes plain. I will commit my life to ink, spurred by the mystifying dream, which even now slips silently behind the veil of unknowing, as elusive as an angel's wingbeat.
Questions, always so many questions. Those that have been put to me, and those I present to myself. In younger days, there were few questions. As age strides steadily on, many arise. Yes, now I am olde, no longer the callow youth infected by the burning fever of those days.

I must pray that God will defend me. In the innocence of my youth, I became a faithful servant of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In His Eternal Wisdom and Holy Mercy, He willed I should be born in England rather than a land honouring what I later came to believe was the True Religion. England, so very different from my Roman exile. England, which has, I have been told, torn itself asunder with Puritan madness and separated the King’s Royal Head from its lofty perch. There are those who say this is God’s just punishment for Charles and a reckoning for this England continuing to inflict fervent persecutions upon the Catholic Faithful.

Do I yet cling to that Faith, as the doubts that may Damn me in the end make war upon it? Who may say with certainty if I be Damned? I think no one. That in itself is a Damnable thought indeed here in this, The Holy City.

In the eventide of life, when all should become clear, the sun set long ago. Darkness rises to spite the dawning day.

Ah, here is the novice, scraping his sandalled feet on the worn stone steps as he approaches my monk's cell, my home for lo these many years. How joylessly he carries the morning's repast, his dull sleep making his rheumy eyes appear even duller. Does he never wash? What a miasma clings to him. I hope he shan’t grin, the sight of his rotting teeth will serve neither my feverish state nor my appetite. In the grim light I shall break my fast with the meagre meal as I sit in my black robes that have faded to grey, and remember.

 

After, I grab the quill, ignore the fever, and write.


Scene I.i
July, 1599
Ingatestone Hall, Essex, England

By Grace I emerged into this troubled world with a voice many found pleasing to the ear. Raising that voice in song would give me the greatest pleasure, would bring me comfort, solace. All I desired was to sing, even as a suckling lad, or so it was told me. As a boy on the cusp of manhood I would discover an even greater desire abiding within my soul. To sing His Holy Praises, to make use of the Gift granted me to bring all to God; this was to be my journey, I came to believe, a journey that began as I was overheard one day by a strange, sad looking man.

In my tenth year, some four years prior to the olde Queen’s death, my new life began. As was my wont, I was singing to the Master’s cows, Master Petre of Ingatestone Hall. The dying day still lay warm upon the fields, the sky shining clear and bright, the air clean and smelling richly from the prior evening’s sweet rain. The common stretched green before me, the woods beyond reaching finger-like into the grazing grounds. My worn shoes full of damp, the only annoyance of a glorious late afternoon in summer. I called the cows home, making sure of their number, the dogs loping lazily beside them. The mile to the Hall before us as we walked, I lost myself in song, a tune my mother oft sang ere she died. It was said by those few who spoke of those days past that when I sang I became as she, with her silver song singing through my open throat. I well-matched her high voice as though she were there in the tavern, they would say as they drank their ale and smoked their pipes while my pater lay o' floor in his piss and puke, dead to life.