My final words to you, my beloved, are these: do not mourn for my passing. Celebrate it. For now, I will be able to stand beside you every single day, and nothing—no force of man or earth—can keep me from you. And I will fight by your side for truth and justice.
Semper. Always.
Conn, standing behind her as she read, left her alone as he watched her body begin to convulse. As he hurried down the hall to give her the privacy she would need, he heard the explosion of her sobs echo across the ancient stones of Canossa. Never, in all his eventful lifetime, had he heard anything more heartbreaking than Matilda’s ultimate mourning.
I say unto you that there are only two commandments that must concern all men and women at all times, and they are:
Love God, your Creator in heaven, with all your heart and all your soul.
Love your neighbor as yourself, knowing that all men and women are your neighbor and that in loving them, you are loving God. So many search the earth and do not realize that they gaze into the face of the divine every day, for the divine is in each of us.
If all mankind lived by these two commandments at all times, there would be no war, no injustice, no suffering. These are not laws of diet or practice or sacrifice. They are laws of love.
How simple is the true will of God!
For those with ears to hear, let them hear it.
FROM THE BOOK OF LOVE,
AS PRESERVED IN THE LIBRO ROSSO
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mantua
1091
The metallic stench of blood filled Matilda’s nostrils, causing her to hold her breath to keep from retching. Henry’s troops had decimated most of Tuscany, looting, burning, and raping with a fevered vengeance that was beyond the imaginings of decent human beings. Matilda’s childhood home was desecrated beyond recognition. Blood puddled in the streets where carcasses of her cherished Tuscan citizens were strewn in gore-dripped pieces; entire families, from grandparents to toddlers, were left hanging from the external rafters of their homes as emblems of hatred. Henry had been determined to make Mantua, Matilda’s greatest and most valuable stronghold, the ultimate victim of her disloyalty to the king.
If she had any doubt of that, she did not after what she witnessed next.
Walking through the smoldering wreckage, Matilda and Conn, with a retinue of their most intrepid men, searched for survivors. They approached one of the larger houses on the outskirts, one attached to a fair amount of prime farming land. Matilda’s heart was in her throat. She knew this house. It belonged to one of her distant cousins on the Lorraine side, a woman called Margarethe. Matilda had not had the time to get to know this cousin well, although she had intended to, as her duties called her away so frequently. She now had cause to regret that she had not stopped by this house to visit in the past, to talk with her kinswoman and know her family. It was one of life’s harshest lessons that most people do not realize how many opportunities for love and friendship are missed until it is too late to reclaim them.
Matilda was aware that both Margarethe and her husband had long been loyal supporters, as Beatrice had mentioned them through the years. Matilda could hear her mother talking about the precious loyalty of friends as she approached the house. Strangely, Henry’s soldiers had not burned this to the ground as they had the others. The door was smashed in and there was visible vandalism and obvious looting, but the structure itself was intact. Matilda wondered why the house had been spared and sought to enter, praying all the while that there would be some sign of life or hope here. Conn, ever suspicious and protective of her, insisted on preceding her into the dwelling.
Conn was a man hardened by the ways of war, but even for him the sight that awaited upon entrance was beyond bearing; he doubled over to catch his breath. Two female victims, apparently Margarethe and her daughter, were tied like livestock, naked, with their throats cut. Both the woman and the girl, who was no more than ten or eleven, had deep purple bruises across their thighs, a silent and horrific testament to what had happened here in the wake of a war in which men lost their humanity. Conn turned to stop Matilda from entering but was too late. She stood behind him, staring at the horror before her and weeping openly. Despite the overwhelming anguish she felt, or perhaps because of it, she did not fail to notice that both these tragic victims were the bearers of red hair.
“Pray with me, Conn. Let us pray for these, our sisters, that their souls are together in heaven and that they will never again know pain.”
Conn nodded, but the voice that replied was not his. It came from a dark corner, raspy and soft. “I will pray with you.”
Matilda startled, and Conn’s hand flew to his sword in reflex, but both waited, holding still, to see what would come next.
A man emerged then from the shadows, hunched and broken. He had once been a tall and strong lord of this manor, but the violence that had been inflicted upon him and his family was beyond bearing. It was clear as Matilda saw his eyes that this man’s spirit was as shattered as his body. More accurately, Matilda saw one eye. The other had been gouged out by a German dagger.
The man, who was called Ugo Manfredi, was carried back to Canossa on a litter, and the bodies of his wife and daughter were wrapped gently in linen cloth and pulled behind them on a cart for proper burial. Matilda nursed Ugo herself, focusing on his spirit as much as his wounded body. In the course of his rehabilitation, the man recounted the nightmare that he had endured at the hands of Henry’s forces.
The soldiers had surrounded the house and kicked in his door. He had seen them coming, but not in enough time to secure his family. Although the women hid beneath a mattress, they were ultimately discovered as one of the German scouts had seen them in the fields days before. He remembered them because of their unusual hair color—remembered them because his commander provided bonuses to men who found such exquisite and particular spoils of war. Ugo reminded Matilda that his wife was from a noble family in Bouillon, and that her father had come here in the service of Bonifacio when she was a child. Matilda listened distraught to the rest of Ugo’s horrific story.
Ugo was captured first. He was asked to declare his loyalty: was it to the harlot of Tuscany or to their divinely appointed King Henry? Ugo was Tuscan by blood and spirit and would never take a false vow, and certainly not one against the woman who ensured the peace and prosperity of this land as her father did before her. He declared for Matilda, knowing that only death could await him. But they did not kill him. They beat him severely, but they allowed him to live. After what he was forced to witness next, he wished that they had given him the blessing of death. Ugo stopped a number of times during the telling, as the events were nearly beyond his ability to recount them.
When his wife and daughter were found, they were stripped and bound as the commander of the forces was brought in to inspect them. The leader, obviously a man of some importance, demanded that both women swear their allegiance to the king. But Ugo’s wife considered herself a kinswoman and was unerringly loyal to their benevolent countess. Neither would swear against Matilda, and Ugo’s eye burned with tears as he recounted his little girl’s bravery in asserting that she was a Tuscan and the kinswoman of the countess.
The arrogant, imperious leader of the troops had his way with them first, then threw them to the remaining soldiers, of which there were fifteen. Not all the men wanted to assault the women, but the leader insisted on it, determined as he was to debase them in the most violent way possible. The soldiers were clearly terrified of their leader, and they followed his orders. All the while, Ugo was kept in the room, forced to witness the horror inflicted upon his precious wife and child.
If God had any mercy left for Ugo, it was that both women were unconscious by the time their throats were sliced open. Most likely they were dead. Hugo was nearly certain that his daughter had died during the beatings that accompanied the rapes because the leader had considered taking the girl with him for his further entertainment later in the evening. He declined afte
r closer inspection, as she was too damaged to be of any use to him. The orders were given to kill them like pigs at the slaughterhouse. At the same time, a second command was given to “mark” Ugo in a way that would show the world what happened to those who were fool enough to declare loyalty to Matilda and deny Henry.
The last thing that Ugo remembered, just before the dagger blade approached his eye, was the leader of the troops standing before him. The arrogant man spit in his face before making his pronouncement. “I have allowed you to live so that you can deliver a message to my bitch of a cousin. Tell the whore of Tuscany that I will desecrate every town that she claims as her own, and every women who claims loyalty to her, in just this way until she begs for my forgiveness on her knees before me. This is the only reason I will leave you your tongue, traitor.”
The imperial leader of the troops who had raped and murdered the Manfredi family then gave the signal for his soldier to end this chapter by maiming the lord of the house. King Henry IV stomped out of the dwelling, anxious to inspect what other spoils of war awaited him in Mantua.
His next target was equally personal, and one he was looking forward to looting himself: the Monastery of San Benedetto de Po. It was Matilda’s spiritual sanctuary, her “Orval of the South,” and a monument to Bonifacio’s family. Taking it from her would be so very sweet.
More than a thousand years before the birth of our Lord, there rested in France a carving of a woman cradling an infant upon her knee. The pagan people of this place had received a great prophecy, a revelation from their druidic priests that a perfected young woman would give birth to a God, and that God would bring light and truth to the world. These pagan peoples were called Carnutes, and they gave their name to the town that would eventually grow from around this place: Chartres.
The sculpture of the perfected lady and child was believed to have magical properties, carved as it was in the hollowed-out trunk of a pear tree and perched on a mound of earth that was known to be sacred. For this hillock covered what the Carnutes called the wouivre, a powerful and purifying current of energy that surged through the earth under its surface and found its pinnacle in this very place. The Carnutes understood that the wouivre was the artery that contained the lifeblood of the planet. Thus the holy mound that marked the very pulse of the earth itself became a place of spiritual initiation for peoples all across the expanse of Europe who traveled here to feel the current run through their own veins. The essence of this flow stimulates the divine in every man and woman. It cannot be explained, but once experienced, it equally cannot be forgotten. The spirit is awakened here, and it is in this place that humans become fully anthropos, which is to say fully realized and integrated in their body, mind, and spirit.
Adding further to the sanctity of this rare locale was a holy well, a chasm reaching deep into the land that filled with the magical womb-waters of the Woman Who Was the Earth. The Holy Mother of Us All was worshipped here in this place for as long as there is memory in man, and she was worshipped under many names. To the Carnutes she was Belusama and it is in this guise that she gives us the story we have come to hear. Belusama was the wife and partner of God, who the Carnutes called Belen. It was a name in keeping with the vernal equinox, the time when the day and night are in perfect balance, thus the name equi-nox, which means night is equal to day in length; dark and light live in harmony.
Belen had at his side a sister-bride, sister in that she was the other half of his soul, and bride in that she was his beloved. This was the glorious Belusama. Belen was known to rule the sky and the air, while this wife ruled the land and the sea. For the male sky God covers the female earth God in a natural occurrence of sacred union. Together, they were whole. Lands were consecrated in their name, many lands, and for this story it is necessary to know that the region where Chartres was founded, and where the magical wouivre wound through the ground with its healing and sacred current, was long named for the wife of God. Through the mists of time, this region was called Belusama, then La Belusa, and finally in the current French tongue it evolved into what we call it today: La Beauce. Thus in the ancient etymology, Chartres is “the sacred land of the Carnute peoples who lived within the holy region of the Mother of Us All, La Beauce.”
Was the carving in the pear tree a representation of Belusama, the perfected wife of God who would create new life in the form of a human child? It was that, and it was more. It was a representation of the divine female principle in creation, and it ever will be.
It is the female face of God.
THE LEGEND OF THE SACRED LAND OF CHARTRES AND
LA BEAUCE, AS PRESERVED IN THE LIBRO ROSSO
Canossa
1091
THE LIBRO ROSSO was safely in Canossa, and so was the Master. He had been visiting at San Benedetto Po, involved in the instruction of Matilda’s son, when Henry began pushing toward Mantua. The Order had enough time to secure what was left of their precious objects, those that had not been melted down or sold in the last defense of Gregory VII. Matilda’s child, along with several of the brothers, escaped to safety in the hills south of Florence, where a new order had been founded decades earlier by a holy monk called Giovanni Gualberto. The order, called the Vallambrosans, were Benedictines of the strictest reforms who were recognized by the abbot of Cluny as the most saintly of God’s brothers. As such, King Henry IV did not dare accost them, and the monastery at Vallambrosa was declared neutral territory and became a safe haven for those of Matilda’s brothers who chose to find sanctuary there.
These brothers of the Order would ultimately blend with the Benedictine Vallambrosans, creating a secretly hybrid philosophy of strict monastic rule and heretical principle that Matilda would fund until her death. It was the Vallambrosans who would take over the Florentine properties of Santa Trinità, where she had spent her teenage years within the teachings of the Order. Four hundred years later, the importance of this—Matilda’s financial support and the endurance of the Order’s most sacred teachings—would become apparent as Santa Trinità evolved into the womb from which the Renaissance was born.
Matilda had spent this morning crafting a writ of dedication to Santa Trinità, a legal document that would ensure continued financial support to the Order from Rome in the event of her death. Drafting it had taxed all her knowledge of the law, and she was mentally exhausted from the exercise. She did not have the luxury of time to rest when her lands and people were in so much danger, so as soon as she put her pen aside to allow the ink to dry on the document, Matilda went out in search of Conn to discuss current military strategy. Henry IV had sacked San Benedetto de Po as he looted and destroyed the remainder of Mantua. Canossa was all they had left of safety, and they needed to be confident that it was secure at all times.
One of Conn’s men came to advise Matilda that his captain was last seen heading for the chapel. She noticed that Conn was spending a lot of time in there since the massacres in Mantua. As Matilda reached the chapel, the door was ajar and she was able to see that Conn was on his knees in prayer, before the Libro Rosso and beside the Master. She watched quietly, waiting until both men appeared to be stirring to rise before entering the room.
The Master had to be ancient at this time in his long life, and yet he did not look so very much different than he did when Matilda first met him as a child. He appeared tired and perhaps a bit worn, but he was in remarkably good physical form for a man of his advanced age. And nothing of the years impacted his spirit, or his mind.
“Come in, my dearest child, come in.”
Matilda entered her chapel, bending her knee to the beautiful life-sized statues of Jesus and his most beloved, Maria Magdalena, before reaching up to kiss the Master on his scarred cheek. She glanced up at Conn, who was looking sheepish, as if he had been caught doing something that was somehow inappropriate and definitely embarrassing.
“My two favorite men in the world.” Matilda smiled, adding with a note beyond curiosity in her voice, “But what on earth could they po
ssibly be doing together?” She knew there was some planning unfolding here—she just wasn’t sure what it was.
The Master looked at Conn, who turned a shade of red that matched Matilda’s hair. “Before I tell you the decision that the Master has come to, and I with him, I need to tell you a story, little sister.”
It was just like Conn to have a story when times were toughest, so Matilda wasn’t surprised at this answer, but she had an inkling that this would be a tale unlike any other he had ever told. The Master excused himself and left the pair of them to the chapel and the stories that it contained.
After nearly twenty years of secrecy, the man named after the ancient Celtic warrior, Conn of the Hundred Battles, told Matilda the story of his long journey to a new life in Tuscany.
Conn, who was born and christened Conchobar Padraic McMahon in the province of Connacht, left the west of Ireland as a boy of fifteen summers after an invasion by the Northmen had brutalized his village. He had willingly entered a monastery three years prior and was committed to the study of language and religion. He loved it, lived for it, and as he was one of seven sons, Conn’s vocation as a monk had been accepted readily by his father, who now had one less child to worry about. As it happened, when the Northmen invaded, Conn was on a supply mission to a monastery further north up the river in Galway to gather more ink and parchment for the manuscripts that the novices were learning to illuminate. He was out of harm’s way when the vicious storm blew in from Scandinavia.