On earth as it is in heaven.
Here you will reaffirm your promise, to God and to yourself, if you are fully anthropos and have remembered it. If you have not yet reached the state of realization, you will confirm your commitment to create heaven on earth by acting in accordance with the Way of Love, by loving the Lord thy God above all else, and by loving your brothers and sisters on earth as yourself, for they are a part of yourself. You will pray then for enlightenment, that through gnosis you will remember the nature of your own eternal promise.
Embrace now the fourth petal, which is to say the petal of ABUNDANCE, and pray,
Give us this day our daily bread, the manna.
Give thanks to the Lord for all he has provided you and know that when you live in harmony with his will, and honor your promise to his service, you will know the bounty of abundance and never have a day of want. There is nothing that you need or desire that will not be provided you when you live in the flow of God’s grace, and when you have aligned yourself with God’s will.
Embrace the fifth petal, which is to say the petal of FORGIVENESS, and pray,
And forgive us for our errors and debts
As we forgive ourselves and all others.
Here you must list those who have harmed you, who have given ill witness against you, or who have otherwise caused you pain. And you must forgive them, while praying that they will one day be fully anthropos and realize their own connection to God and remember their own promise. You must ask that anyone you have offended forgive you in the same way, and most of all you must forgive yourself for all the actions and thoughts that have brought shame upon you in your human weaknesses. For while all forgiveness is the balm of our compassionate Mother, self-forgiveness is needed most of all.
Embrace the sixth petal, which is to say the petal of STRENGTH, and pray,
Keep me on the path of righteousness and
Deliver me from the temptations of evil.
For temptation is that which keeps us from becoming fully realized beings. It prevents us from keeping our promise to God and to ourselves and to each other and is found through the temptations of avarice, hubris, sloth, lust, wrath, gluttony, and envy most of all. Contemplate these sins and pray for your release from any that tempt you from the path of the anthropos.
Pray in this manner that I have given you, and teach your brothers and sisters in spirit to do the same. It is through living this prayer that men and women will create heaven on earth. It is through this prayer that they will live as love expressed.
Love Conquers All.
For those with ears to hear, let them hear it.
THE PRAYER OF THE SIX-PETALED ROSE,
FROM THE BOOK OF LOVE, AS PRESERVED IN THE LIBRO ROSSO
Palace of Verdun
spring 1071
MATILDA WAS PREGNANT.
She was certain of it. There had been two full cycles of the moon since she had last bled, and the way her stomach roiled in the morning made it impossible to eat even the plainest breads.
Here was a conundrum for her. If she admitted her pregnancy immediately, she could insist that the hunchback not touch her for fear of hurting the baby. This would be a most welcome reprieve from his grunting and rutting, which she detested like poison. Perhaps she could even insist on private quarters for the duration of her confinement. Unfortunately, her husband had been most highly aroused by her wanton performance on their wedding night, which she had not anticipated. His desire for her had become an instant obsession, an unholy addiction to his exotic wife and her unnatural body. He now came looking for it on an all too regular basis, desperate and demanding.
The bedroom performances made Matilda ill, but she had still somehow managed to prevent the hunchback from kissing her. That he showed little interest in doing so, preoccupied as he was with the other pleasures of her femininity, was the only thing that kept her sanity intact after the sun went down.
On the other hand, if she told him she was with child, he would insist that she stop riding. This would mean that she could not continue to oversee the building of Orval, which was the one true joy of her life. To be deprived of it was more than she could take. She had placed the first foundation stone herself on the vernal equinox of 1070, almost exactly a year ago, and had been involved in every single decision that was made in the building. Further, the word had come from the Order that Patricio’s brother monks from Calabria who would copy the Libro Rosso were on their way north to her. While she could house them in the palace initially, as the work began in earnest on the translations, she would need to get them out of Verdun and away from the interrogations that were part of Godfrey’s everyday behavior. She did not want to lose her freedom to attend the building any sooner than was necessary.
As it happened, Matilda’s hand was forced on a night shortly after she ascertained her condition. The hunchback was out late, as he often was, given that their lands stretched over a broad expanse beyond Stenay. Normally, when he rode to the edge of their territory, he did not return to Verdun until the next day, much to her relief. Matilda had gone to bed on this particular night, exhausted from the daily running of the household, the building of the grandest abbey in Europe, and the new life growing in her body. Because the hour was so late, she was certain that her husband would be staying elsewhere this night.
She was wrong.
Matilda heard him before she saw him. And smelled him before he entered the chamber.
“Where is my woman?” He stumbled into their bedroom, reeking of ale and something worse that Matilda could not quite identify until he got closer. Vomit. He was filthy and disgusting, as if he had been rolling about in one of the seedier alehouses for many hours. The hunchback periodically indulged his wretched unhappiness in such ways. For all his physical defects, he was a man and a healthy one, and prior to his marriage he had sought release regularly in the brothels and alehouses. Since wedding the red witch, he found that he needed to escape into the safe familiarity of straw-haired Germanic girls now more than ever, in hope of breaking the spell his wicked wife had cast over him. Compounding his torment was the fact that she hated him, that he disgusted her, and that he knew it.
Previously when Godfrey had sought relief in too much ale and time at the brothels, he had passed out long before he could reach his wife. Tonight she would not be so lucky. The bland milkmaids at the alehouse had simply been no match for Matilda in his fevered brain. Even with two of the more buxom girls in the back room at one time, he had not been able to blot out the vision of the firebrand who awaited him in his own bed. By the time he returned to the palace, he was a man possessed by both his lust and his inner demons.
“Come to your man and husband, you wanton bitch,” he slurred as he moved toward her, pulling roughly at his breeches.
Matilda was half asleep when he came into the room and was now trying to gather her bearings to deal with his unexpected arrival. Her normally quick reflexes were dulled by both sleeplessness and her condition. The unexpected speed with which he climbed upon her barely gave her time to turn her head as he attempted to bring his stinking mouth down upon the softness of her full lips. He caught only her cheek with a grunt, and his teeth left an imprint on her face as he did so. She desperately tried to distract him with her skilled hands, but tonight this normally effective strategy was not going to work.
Godfrey slapped her hard with the back of his hand. “Turn your head to me, woman.”
He didn’t wait for her to comply. Instead, he grabbed fistfuls of her hair in both hands and forced her lips against his. She struggled to keep her teeth together, but the hunchback overpowered her painfully and forced his slithery, probing tongue into her mouth. Desperate to get out from under him, Matilda used a battle technique that she had been taught by Conn, pushing her knee deep into his chest and rolling over in one quick, painful motion.
The hunchback fell to the floor with a thud and a grunt. He was momentarily still as he waited for his breath to come back. Then
he began to rise slowly, menacingly. His hands were clenched in fists as he approached her.
“I will have my rights as a husband from you, when I want and how I want. Your precious legal document does not excuse you from that.”
Matilda blurted out as quickly as she could, before he took another sloppy step, “Godfrey, stop. I am with child.”
He blinked at her, as if he had not heard her clearly, which was likely in his severely intoxicated state. He slurred at her.
“What you say?”
“I said, I am carrying your child. And the midwife says that given my fine bones, if you touch me, I will be at great risk to lose the baby.”
She lied, of course, but he was too ignorant to know such things, even when he was sober.
He took another deliberate step in her direction, reaching out with surprising agility to grab a handful of her hair and using it to yank her toward him. “Why should I believe a lying witch like you?” His lust and his drunkenness were a dangerous and unreasonable combination. And the hunchback was a big man. She had to make him understand. Fast.
“Because you have waited all these years for an heir, and if you touch me, you risk any chance you will ever have of gaining one.”
He loosened his grip but did not release her. Matilda was exasperated now. She snapped the next sentence with more than a little of her warrior attitude returning.
“There are any number of serving wenches in this house who will be happy to relieve you for the price of a trinket. Must you endanger our child—the future duke of Lorraine—with your drunken lust?”
It worked. Intoxicated as he was, with ale and with her, Matilda was still able to reach some part of his brain that contained his ultimate ambition. The hunchback mumbled something about discussing this with her on the morrow, and he stumbled out of their bedroom without looking back.
Matilda felt pity, and more than a little guilt, for the poor servant girl who would be required to entertain her lord duke in his inflamed state this night. Later, she would find out from the other servants which of them had suffered the indignity and double the girl’s pay. It was the least she could do.
But secretly, she was infinitely relieved that the hunchback’s masculine pleasure would not be her duty for the next seven months, at the very least.
Matilda was a prisoner in the palace. Just as she feared, Godfrey had provided her with a list of what she was and was not allowed to do. Riding was at the top of the list of forbidden activities. She was under constant surveillance by one or another of the hunchback’s employees: priests, doctors, midwives, all who interviewed her constantly and left her no peace whatsoever. Even the cook monitored every morsel she placed into her mouth and surreptitiously stationed servants in the room while she was dining to be sure she ate what was laid out for her.
Thankfully, her husband had avoided her like the plague itself since the night of his humiliation in their bedchamber. Matilda was certain that he didn’t trust her and that he thought she would deliberately harm their child, which was the reason for the intense and omnipresent observation from his staff. It was horrible to know that all these people thought her capable of something as wicked as that. But it was equally hard to feel the quickening life in her body and know that it had not been conceived immaculately in the ways taught by the Order. This poor babe, through no fault of its own, had not been created in a sacred environment. The Book of Love taught that all children born from the union of true beloveds are immaculately conceived in the eyes of God, but when a child is conceived outside of love, it does not have so great a blessing at its birth. This was taught not as a judgment upon the poor infants who have no choice, but as a warning to adults not to bear children outside the realm of love.
Dear God, why did you take me from Isobel and the Master at a time like this? Matilda needed spiritual guidance now, more than ever. She was starved for it, and she was miserable. Her only sanctuary was the private chapel, the sole place where she could escape and close the door to shut out all the hunchback’s spies. She entered, touching first as she always did the little statue of Saint Modesta, which was now perched upon a gilded altar.
As a surprise for her equinox birthday, Patricio painted a six-petaled rose in the center of the floor. While she would not have a labyrinth in Lorraine until Orval was completed, he could create a sacred place for her to work through their most holy prayer. Perhaps this would provide her with the spiritual strength that she required to get through her current tribulations.
Matilda relished this place, and she entered the rose now to begin her prayer. She started in the first petal and made her gratitude known for all that she had been blessed with in her life before moving into the second petal.
Thy will be done, she whispered to herself over and over again. Dear God, why do you want this from me? Why have I been removed from everyone I love and the only place I will ever call home? How can I better understand your will?
Sometimes she heard his voice clearly, but this was most often in the labyrinth. At other times, she heard only the sound of the silence in her ears. Today she heard him with a force she had not anticipated.
“When the Vale of Gold is finished, you may return home, where you will find great love as reward for your obedience to your destiny and your promise.”
There were puzzles in that answer, such as how, precisely, she would be allowed to return home, but she was comforted by what she heard. God’s will was for her to build Orval, and that was what she was doing. The construction of it was proceeding at a rapid pace; a mild winter had allowed the builders to work well past the normal season. And the Calabrians were here, working in earnest to copy the Libro Rosso. It was all going perfectly to plan.
She completed her prayer in the six petals, spending ample time in the fifth, the petal of forgiveness. She prayed to find the strength to forgive Godfrey for his wretchedness by having compassion for his condition and the pain it had caused him. Matilda prayed to God to forgive her for despising her husband as she did, and for perhaps not behaving in a manner that was more loving toward him. When she was finished, she felt a sense of peace that had eluded her previously. And God rewarded her for her piety, because Patricio arrived unexpectedly from Orval the same afternoon.
He came to inform her of the quick progress on their beautiful abbey, and to share drawings of the structures as they had been raised to illustrate their beauty and majesty. She wished more than anything to see the great, six-petaled rose window, which had already been erected, its outline visible from the garden labyrinth just beginning construction. Patricio was very excited about the grandeur of the entire structure and tried to share that passion while at the same time not making her feel despair at her inability to ride out with him. He could see the wistful longing on her face.
“Oh Patricio, I wish I could be there with you.”
“Time passes so quickly. You will be there before you know it. And by the time you are able to travel, we will be nearly finished with the first buildings and I will have a perfect labyrinth constructed for you in the garden.”
“I look forward to it, more than you know.”
It was the early fall when Patricio came again to Verdun to see Matilda early one morning, full of the news that the labyrinth was finished. He was buoyant in his excitement as he had christened it himself with the very first walk in and out of the eleven circuits the evening prior. He wanted to share this success with her. Together, they had created a magnificent library and training ground for the teachings of the Way of Love, and it was something to be celebrated.
The Matilda who greeted him was not herself and was in no frame of mind for a celebration. She was well into the seventh month of her confinement, and the child was showing on her small frame. They were walking in the direction of the stables now, Matilda gazing longingly at the horses. “What I wouldn’t give to walk that labyrinth now. Within the labyrinth is the only place I have ever found real peace, you know.” She stopped suddenly, looking aro
und. They had not been followed, that she could see. Patricio knew her well enough to sense what was in her head; there was a reason the Master said they shared the same brain.
“No, Matilda. Don’t even think about it. It’s too dangerous.”
“Godfrey is gone for the next three days. If we leave now, we can be back here before it is too dark. I won’t stay long, Patricio. Just long enough to view the new construction and walk my labyrinth just one time.”
“Have you gone mad? You are in no condition to ride. And you cannot ride in what you are wearing, even if you were.”
“Listen to me. Have you ever known anyone more comfortable on a horse than I am? It is no different than sitting in a chair. I will take one of the older and more stable mounts. It will cost me an extra hour in each direction, but if we leave immediately, it could work. And there are riding garments in the tack room. Men’s garments, but all the better to disguise myself and my condition.”
“Do not ask me to do this with you, Tilda. Please.”
“Whom else can I ask, my brother?”
Her aquamarine eyes filled with tears as she pleaded with him. “Please. I have had no joy in my life these past six months. To see what we have created in Orval, to celebrate it as you have said, is something that will give me life again. It will see me through the rest of my confinement.”
“God forgive me if anything happens to you or that child,” Patricio grumbled, shaking his head. “Come quickly then, before we’re seen.”
Once they were in the forest, Matilda forgot she was with child. She urged the horse into a canter and began to ride at her customary breakneck pace.
“Matilda, slow down!” Patricio was sweating, despite the early autumn chill in the air. He had had a sense of foreboding about this adventure from the moment he saw her face back at the stables. While he knew she would never intentionally hurt herself or the baby, she was behaving in a most reckless way.