Chapter 10

We came unto a noble castle’s foot,

Seven times encompassed with lofty walls,

Defended round by a fair rivulet.

Dante, Inferno, 4.106-108

No one spoke as they got the horses on the raft and pulled themselves across the river. It felt good to Dante – the repetitive, monotonous, physical exertion of putting one hand over the other to pull the rope. It wasn’t like the frenzied rush of battle, nor the quiet calm of riding, nor the sedentary thrills of reading and writing, but it was soothing and exhilarating simultaneously. Most of all, such work never made him feel guilty, as fighting, resting, or writing always threatened to, with their confusing and complicating connections to violence, rage, pride, or sloth. This felt more like what one was supposed to be doing – hard work, with a simple goal that didn’t include hurting anyone or anything, or acquiring any substantive object. Even speech would taint the balm of this guiltless, selfless interlude. The silence of the other two seemed to confirm they felt this too. But a glance to the left, where several of the bodies could still be seen drifting, reconnected Dante quickly to the horror they had just witnessed, and in which they had participated. The corpses were far enough downstream they could barely be distinguished from other objects in the water, but it was still enough to make Dante’s stomach contract and his head feel light and useless.

They got off on the other bank and Radovan cut the rope that ran across the river. The ferry slowly eased out into the stream and picked up speed, as the rope slipped into the water. “The army has sections of bridge already built, to put across the river here when they arrive,” he explained. “But they would have sent a boy across on the rope to get the raft, and get troops across that way until the pontoon bridge was built. So perhaps this will slow them down just a bit, at least the forward scouts who would have caught up with us first.”

They mounted their horses and followed the road into the forest. It was late afternoon. This time of year it stayed light fairly late, but they would need to stop before too long.

“Is there another town on this side of the river?” Dante asked. “Is there any place safe to stop tonight?”

“I don’t know if anywhere is safe,” Radovan said. “There are more villages further up the valley. And there are individual houses and logging camps scattered all over. But up ahead there is another road that leads to a monastery. Perhaps we should try asking for shelter there. I have only heard of it. The brothers there are hermits and are seldom seen out among the people.”

“Perhaps they would be more likely to help us – more helpful than the villagers were,” Bogdana said.

“Or the army,” Radovan said.

“Or the clergy,” Dante added.

The sun was poised above the mountains ahead of them, as they turned down a road that forked slightly to the right. Since he had no better plan, Dante did not object to going to the monastery, but he was not completely confident they would receive sympathy and hospitality from men who had retreated from human society. It would probably come as no surprise to the brothers that their neighbors were now physically as well as spiritually diseased. Dante looked at Radovan, then down at his own arms. They’d washed their hands in the river, but their sleeves and shirts still looked like they had just come from slaughtering cattle, and the monks would surely guess the truth was much worse. And as reassuring as Bogdana’s large, taut belly felt to Dante, he knew that men who had devoted themselves to the perfect, pristine God, and withdrawn from the presence of their sinful, polluted neighbors – especially those neighbors who were female – might find it much more disconcerting than comforting. Dante remembered the story of the Good Samaritan, of how a priest and a Levite had left the man to die, because they believed him less clean than themselves. But he also remembered how years ago he had heard a sermon preached on this same gospel story, about how the Samaritan had done something especially virtuous and admirable, because he had helped someone so unlike himself, someone from a different, hostile tribe. The story started to give Dante hope on that spring afternoon, as the shadows lengthened and they rode on into the deepening darkness.

He knew he had been unable to commit to the monastic vows because of his own weakness, together with the ambition of his father for a socially advantageous marriage, and he tried to hope these men were better monks than he would have been.

The road ascended for some time, switching back on itself to make the slope climbable, until they came to a break in the trees and emerged into a large, open area. It was a striking vista, with the sun just touching the tops of the mountains to the west. Spreading out before them was a bowl-like indentation in the land, with a lake in the middle of it. In the lake was an island, at the far end of which was a stone building, several stories tall. The water of the lake was an especially brilliant blue, and the pine trees on the island were a particularly deep green. All the colors in this part of the valley seemed to take on a special vibrancy and vitality. The air seemed completely clear and fresh for the first time since Dante had entered this land.

They followed the road down through the field that stretched from the edge of the forest to the shore of the lake. As they got closer, they could see that a narrow, wooden bridge ran from the large island to a much smaller one that was only about thirty feet from the shore. On the smaller island was a mechanism for raising and lowering a drawbridge that connected it to the mainland. The bridge was in the up position, and there were two robed figures on the small island.

Before they got all the way to the shore, Radovan turned to Dante and Bogdana. “I don’t know who should address them,” he said quietly. He looked at Dante. “Your strange accent might put them off, but they would probably suspect I’m in the army, and I don’t know how they feel about the army coming here, or how they feel about deserters.” He looked at Bogdana. “They might have more sympathy for a woman, or they might have rules about not letting you anywhere near the place. I don’t know what to do.”

“You, go ahead,” Bogdana said to Dante. “The accent might make them less suspicious than the sword and armor, I think, and less suspicious than they would be of a woman.”

They had reached the point where the road ended by the lake. As Dante waved to the two figures, he felt a sick dread at the thought they might be dead like the people on the ferry. But they weren’t moving about in frenzied hunger, the way the dead always seemed to. They just stood there. One finally waved back. “The plague is abroad,” he shouted to Dante. “Are any of you bitten?”

“No,” Dante replied. “We can come across one at a time and you can inspect us, if you like.”

“We shall. But what do you want here? We are hermits and we don’t usually accept visitors, except in extreme situations, and they are never allowed to stay long.”

“We are traveling west. The army is coming this way and we fear they will kill us. The undead are in the woods. We need shelter for the night. We will move on in the morning.”

The two figures conferred, then they turned the wheel to lower the drawbridge across the water. When it was in the down position, the one who had spoken before did so again. “Dismount, all of you. You, the one we spoke to, lead your horse across. You other two, stay on the shore.”

Dante did as he was told. When he was on the other side of the drawbridge with the two figures, he was shocked to see that the one who had not spoken was in fact a woman. A young one at that, about Bogdana’s age, though her hair was cut short, nearly bald, as was the hair of the young man with her. She noticed his surprise. “I will turn around if you like,” she said. “And my brother monk will do the same when your woman comes across.”

“He can turn around for her if she likes, but no, you needn’t do anything special for me. I just didn’t expect to see women here,” Dante said.

The man had been looking Dante over and poking him with a staff. “Lift up your frock,” he said, “all the way to your armpits.” Dante reconsidered having the woman turn around, but everything was so weird and outside of normal decency here, he just went ahead and lifted his frock. “Roll your pants up past the knees.”

He followed the directions, then he was waved on to cross the narrow bridge to the island and wait there. Bogdana was the second across, and although he didn’t see her ask the male monk to turn around, Dante did look away when she was inspected. She joined him on the island, and a few moments later the man and the woman in robes came over with Radovan, after they had raised the drawbridge.

“Please, follow the trail,” the man said. “Our monastery is on the other side of the island.”

They did so, leading their tired horses. It was twilight, but nothing here seemed as threatening and unnatural as everything else they had encountered. In a short while, they heard clacking sounds and shouts. Even these, though unexpected, did not have the sound of panic and alarm, but seemed orderly and normal. The three travelers and their escorts emerged from among the trees into an open area in front of the monastery building. Here there were a couple dozen people in grey robes, practicing at fighting each other with wooden staves. They were all ages, from teens to the elderly, and like the pair who had met them at the bridge, there were both men and women among them. They stopped their practicing when they saw the newcomers, and one of the older men approached them.

The young man who had accompanied them from the bridge explained who they were to the older man, who was bald, with a closely-trimmed beard, and an exceptionally short and wiry build. “Thank you, Brother Jonas and Sister Genya. Please return to the bridge and keep watch there and do not let anyone else across. But you were right to let these in, I think.” He turned to Dante, Bogdana, and Radovan. “Welcome. I am Brother Adam. We are just finishing our evening’s exercises, before dinner and our final prayers. You may make our home your sanctuary for tonight, if you wish it.”

Dante still did not know if these people were better monks than he would have been, but he could definitely tell they were very different from the Franciscans.