GAUL
THE CARSAC PLAINS
JULY AD 342
The young monk looked across the river and saw the outline of the town ahead on the hill on the far side. A fortified castellum, the low walls sharply defined in the shimmering light of dawn. A crown of stone set on the green plains of Carsac. The slopes surrounding the settlement were abundant, rich, fertile. Row after row of vines, spread out like a peacock’s tail. Silver olive trees and heavy purple figs ripening on the bough, almond trees.
In the east, the white sun was rising in a pale blue sky. Arinius drew closer to the water’s edge. A low mist floated above the silver surface of the river Atax. To his right, wooded glades of elder and ash. The reed beds shifting, swaying, in the breeze. The distinctive silhouette of angelica, with its hollow fluted stems standing like soldiers to attention, the leaves as big as his hand. The familiar bell-shaped pink flowers of knitbone. The splash of fish and snakes, water boatmen skimming their silent way across the mirrored surface.
For week after week, one month, two months, the young monk had walked and walked and walked. Following the sweep and flow of the great Rhodanus from Lugdunum, south towards the sea. Rising before matins each day, with the memory of the gentle murmur of his brothers’ voices in his head, he voyaged on alone. In the heat of the day, between the hours of sext and nones, sheltering from the sun in the dense green woods or shepherds’ huts. In the late afternoon, as the first stirrings of vespers echoed from the chapel in the community, he would rise again and fare forward. The Liturgy of the Hours marking the progress of the days and nights. A slow and steady progress from north to south, from east to west.
Arinius didn’t know precisely how long he had been travelling, only that the seasons were changing, spring slipping softly into early summer. The colours of April and May, white blossom and yellow broom and pink phlox, yielding to the gold of June and July. The green vineyards of the Gallia Narbonensis and the sweep of barley in the fields. The driving wind whipping over the austere salt flats and the blue of the gulf of the Sinus Gallicus. That stretch of the journey followed the Via Domitia, the Roman wine route, along roads of tolls and taxes. It had been simple for him to blend in with the merchants and traders heading for Hispania.
Arinius coughed and pulled the grey hooded cloak tight around his narrow frame, though it was far from cold. The cough was worse again, leaving his throat raw. Bunching the material at his neck, he re-pinned his brooch. A bronze fibula, in the shape of a cross, with tiny white enamel oak leaves decorating each of the four arms and a green leaf in the centre. It was the only personal possession Arinius had been unable, unwilling, to give up on entering the community. A gift from his mother, Servilia, the day the soldiers came.
He looked across the Atax to the walls of the town and gave thanks to God for his safe deliverance. He had heard that here, men of all faiths and creeds were given sanctuary. That here, Gnostics and Christians and those who adhered still to the older religions lived side by side. That this was a place of safety and refuge for any and all who would come.
Arinius put his hand to his chest, needing to feel the familiar single loose leaf of papyrus beneath his tunic. He thought of his fellow brothers in Christ, each of them also smuggling a copy of a condemned text away from the community. They had parted company at Massilia, where it was said Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea had first come ashore to preach the word of God. From there Arinius and his brothers set sail for Smyrna in Asia Minor. From there, one was bound for the Holy City of Jerusalem and the plains of Sephal, another for Memphis, the last for Thebes in Upper Egypt. Arinius would never know if their efforts had been successful, any more than they would hear of him. Each was destined – burdened – to complete his mission alone.
Arinius considered himself an obedient and willing servant of God. He was not a particularly brave man, nor a lettered one, but he had found strength in his conviction that the holy writings should not be destroyed. He could not watch the words of Mary Magdalene and Thomas and Peter and Judas burning. Arinius still remembered the crack of the flames licking the air, red and white and gold, as the precious writings were consigned to the pyre. Papyrus and vellum, the quires and scrolls, the blister of Greek and Hebrew and Coptic turned to black ash. The smell of reed and water and glue and wax filling the stone courtyard of the community in the capital of Gaul that had been his home.
The papyrus shifted beneath his tunic, like a second skin. Arinius did not understand the text; he could not read the Coptic script, and besides, the letters were smudged, cracked. All he understood was that it was said the power contained within the seven verses of this, the shortest of the Codices, was absolute. As great as anything in the ancient writings of Exodus or Enoch, of Daniel or Ezekiel. More significant than all the knowledge contained within the walls of the great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum.
Arinius had heard some of the lines spoken aloud by a fellow brother, and never forgotten them. An incantation, wonderful words sent free within the cool cloisters of the community in Lugdunum. It was an act that had precipitated the Abbot’s rage. Considering this Codex to be the most dangerous of all those proscribed books held in the library, he decreed it to be magic, a sorcery, and those who defended it were denounced as heretics. Enemies of the true faith. The novitiate was punished.
But Arinius believed he was carrying the sacred words of God. That his destiny, perhaps his entire purpose on God’s earth, was to ensure that the truth contained within the papyrus was not lost. Nothing else mattered.
Now, floating across the still waters to where he stood on the banks of the river Atax, the toll of a bell for lauds. A simple song calling him home. Arinius raised his eyes to the city on the hill and prayed he would find a welcome there. Then he grasped his staff in his right hand, stepped out on to the wooden bridge and walked towards Carcaso.