The Sibyliad: The Hell Jar: Chapter 2

The Sibyliad is my unfinished "epic" and is composed of several short books.

A Belated Introduction

I suppose this telling of history’s-troubled-dream serves as a double mythology, but whatever truth it appears to obscure, may it also illuminate.

Plethon came to Florence as part of the ecumenical council attempting to unite Rome with the Roman Empire (the Latin church with the Greek) prior to the fall of Constantinople. Plethon, whose birth name was Georgios Gemistos, was at least seventy-nine, and he had come at the request of the emperor to be his advisor. He was a respected philosopher, but after his death, writings were discovered that were interpreted as a rejection of Christianity and an embrace of a pagan spirituality inspired by classical Greek mythology. It seems accurate to say his writing interpreted the facets of the Divine and categorized those facets using the names of the classical Hellenistic gods. The truth is elusive, though, as the bulk of that writing was deemed heretical and destroyed.

The Latin church of the time was very much beholden to Aristotle, but Plethon helped re-introduce the west to Plato (after whom he’d styled his own name). It is said that his profound effect upon Cosimo de’ Medici inspired the creation of the Platonic Academy which Marsilio Ficino led, but that is history, which isn’t the same as saying it’s true. Plethon’s influence on Medici has been questioned as has the role and nature of the Platonic Academy.

We too easily think ourselves above believing in mythology, which we pretend is limited to pagan gods and magical creatures, but modern mythology is a re-imagined past told to hide unpleasant truths. We create mythologies about our nations, our institutions, and our past, like children who tell themselves bedtime stories so they can sleep at night.

The Sibyliad

Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”

--Satyricon by Petronius,
quoted by T.S. Eliot
as the epigraph for The Waste Land.

Translation:

I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her “What do you want?” she answered, “I want to die.”

Eliot was not one to give translations of his foreign language quotes. Instead, he championed a view of literature which was obscure and exclusionary; he wrote for academia. I don’t mean this as a criticism, simply as a context for why he is beloved by academia while others are not. Their brilliance does not require a lecture hall. Eliot’s does. It’s hard to imagine, but once there was no long tradition of studying a canon of English literature. The classics were by the Greeks and Romans, and those who sought to legitimize English departments in universities needed theories of literary criticism that would require their existence. They needed poetry and fiction that were not accessible to the masses but, rather, obscure and heavily referential. Eliot provided everything academia required.

Incanto 2

Alessandra’s father retired to bed, but she lingered in the garden. In the faint moonlight, she saw hints of the city, a wall beyond her own and rooftops in the distance. In the night, the flowers and vines of the garden were muted, almost gray, the house dark and drenched with shadow.

She sat alone at the little table and let her heart’s wounds bleed. When she had the strength, she ate berries from the vine and stood in the doorway of the house peering inside at furniture formed in silhouette, a kitchen on one side, a table on the other. The bedrooms were hidden behind a closed door or up the simple staircase.

She imagined her son beside her. This place was so very close to being everything she needed, and yet her heart could find no joy and no contentment. Without her son, it was a shadow of the world she’d wanted and nothing she’d wanted at all.

Weary and forlorn, she climbed the stairs and crawled into bed. She tried to sleep but only stared into utter darkness. This was hell.

In fitful moments of sleep, the opening of blossoms in the supple light of dawn filled her dreams. Her son’s laughter drifted across the garden; hints of musk, sandalwood, and myrrh lingered in the air. She sat up, awake in a space defined by the lack of all these things, a molted shell of discarded promise.

In the night, a shadow moved. Alessandra rose from her bed and peered out the high window to the city and its gate, a memory of a shriek lingering in her mind, perhaps a fragment remembered from a nightmare.

A figure stood in firelight, and when it moved, she screamed.

#

She tried to tell her father what she’d seen, but the feeble languages of man couldn’t carrying the weight. She felt the dishonesty of her words despite their truth. When neighbors stole her father’s attention with rumors of gruesome killings, she gave up trying.

She was washing the dishes when she heard the horrid little man’s voice at the gate.

“I need to ask a few questions about last night.”

“You’re investigating the deaths at San Marco?” her father asked.

“Under orders from the emperor.”

That piqued her interest. She gathered the wine and met them in the garden.

“I’m working with Plethon,” Daphnis was saying.

Alessandra looked at him from beneath her brow. She had known better than to trust his first boast, but this she believed.

“He’ll be here soon,” he continued. “We’re heading into the country. To the north. There’s a chance a survivor passed this way.”

“Last night, you say? Maybe so. Maybe there was something.” Nannoccio looked up at her. “You saw a light at the gate, didn’t you? A fire?”

Alessandra didn’t move.

“Tell me?” Daphnis asked.

Alessandra wanted to be heard, but this was not the man to hear. “I don’t know what I saw, really.”

“Please,” he said.

Alessandra straightened her shoulders. “I saw a woman on fire, and then...”

Daphnis waited.

“The fire flew away.”

“Maybe your survivor was carrying a torch.” Her father said, and she saw the apology in his eyes, not to her but to Daphnis Lamonidis.

Daphnis kept his focus on Alessandra. “Thank you.”

Plethon arrived with the carriage, escorted by a unit of soldiers with a foreigner at their lead. Daphnis thanked the family for their hospitality and promised to return when he could.

“Perhaps the two of you would eat before you go?” Nannoccio suggested, his attention on Plethon.

Alessandra instinctively looked to Daphnis, wondering if he sensed the change in her father’s demeanor. Plethon must have been in his eighties, too old to be considered a suitor, but he held her father’s respect in a way Daphnis never could. Alessandra savored the difference.

If Daphnis noticed, he hid it well, or maybe it didn’t matter. Anyone’s attention would be pulled to the celebrated philosopher, and Daphnis was the sort to bathe in the overflow of glory, congratulating himself on being the reason the great Plethon had come to their home.

Plethon offered his regrets at being unable to accept the invitation, and her father watched the carriage go. Alessandra watched something else, something ethereal that weighed heavy upon her. An angel had appeared in the night, and that had to mean something beyond the strange deaths of a few monks. It had to mean something for her.

“Too bad he’s foreign,” her father said. “He could have made something for himself in Florence.”

She pulled away. “Do you want to eat in the garden?”

“I’ll be inside momentarily.”

Against all the grief and loss that welled up within her, Alessandra told herself it would have been no different if her mother still lived. The world moved according to the dictates of men, and God bless those unfortunate enough to be born a woman. All she wanted was her son and a place to raise him, but no one asked. No one cared.

She entered the gloom of the tiny house, and she’d shut the door behind her before she realized she wasn’t alone.

A woman stood at her table. Alessandra recognized her; she’d seen her the night before, at the gate. The woman smiled at her. The hair that fell to her shoulders was auburn, so red as to be mistaken for fire. One bare leg shone, reflecting the light as if forged from brass.

The woman stretched. Great, black wings, like those of a bat, spread from one end of the room to the other. Alessandra froze except for the trembling of her hand upon the door. She wanted to scream and perhaps to find both refuge in that release from its dreadful attention. The vision before her could be nothing more than that, a vision, a trick played by a mind no stronger than men believed. A release of her bottled terror might break the spell, but a scream would draw her father’s attention. It would introduce him to the danger that was now only hers to bear. That she would not do. If this creature was to be her end, it would be her end alone.

“I saw you,” she said at last.

The creature nodded.

Behind Alessandra, the door opened, and the harsh glare of the day swept across the room.

“Papa, wait,” she said. “I’m washing up.”

The door closed slightly. “Let’s eat in the garden, after all.”

“Very good, Papa.”

Her father’s footsteps retreated, and the creature closed the distance between them. She smelled like ash. A warm hand touched Alessandra’s shoulder. The door opened wide, and the light of the day enveloped them. On great, black wings, the creature flew, and Alessandra dangled in her grasp. Tree tops tickled the bottom of her feet. The air whipped at her like a winter’s gale, and they left the house behind them and Daphnis’s carriage below.

The creature’s grip was careful and secure. Almost gentle.

Secretary

Daphnis tried to assure himself that no blame could be placed for failing to solve such ungodly crimes in the span of a day, that neither the outcome of the Council nor the fate of Constantinople rested upon their shoulders. In this, he didn’t succeed.

If all else failed, when they returned to their normal lives in the morning, Daphnis needed to have done at least one true act. So, he spoke.

“I haven’t told you the truth.”

“No?” Plethon asked.

“The woman, Alessandra, saw something last night, but the nature of it seems incredible; I couldn’t bear it if you were to belittle her word in this matter.”

“I understand,” Plethon said.

“She saw a woman on fire, and the fire...”

“Go on.”

“It flew away.”

“Did the fire, itself, fly, or was it the burning woman?”

“I asked you not to ridicule.”

“I’m not,” Plethon said. “These are serious questions.”

“It was the fire. I think.”

“Is she certain on this point?”

“I don’t know,” Daphnis said. “I didn’t ask.”

“What did you ask?”

“Well, nothing.”

“Our one witness, and you posed no questions?”

Daphnis began to defend himself but realized that in so doing, he’d commit the very act he’d begged Plethon to avoid.

Plethon peered out the carriage window, past the soldiers on horseback, apparently considering making the trek back to pose his questions.

“Does the burning woman mean something to you?” Daphnis asked.

“Not now, no, but this world often poses its answer before the question. Although this could be the fascination of an intellect without reason, it’s no lie, of that I’m certain. Has she been accused of bedevilment?”

“No, never.”

“You’ve found her respectable and reasonable in other matters, to the limits of her education?”

“Thoroughly.”

“Until given reason to do otherwise, I’ll take her at her word,” Plethon said. “I cannot surmise what she saw, but perhaps before long, the question will present itself.”

Daphnis had known Plethon’s reputation and witnessed his powers of reason and debate, but for the first time, he felt inspired by him. Beyond anything else, he was grateful. Plethon knew nothing of Alessandra, and yet he had shown her the respect he’d failed to give.

Their time might be limited, but perhaps there was hope.

He said none of this but only, “It’s getting late.”

“I expect we’ll arrive after nightfall.”

Daphnis peered out at the dark blue sky and thought of Alessandra. This small confession had done little to assuage his greater guilt, a guilt that wine could never again wash away. Plethon’s respect had unveiled his own selfishness, cowardice, and cruelty.

He prayed for forgiveness and what came to mind was scripture, a fragment from the proverbs: Men don’t despise a thief who steals bread when he is starving; but if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house.

Daphnis had stolen Alessandra’s trust, coming to their garden in the guise of a suitor, knowing she would never leave her son and he would never stay in Florence. How could a theft like this be restored even once, let alone seven times over?

Some things could never be restored.

She’ll not rest content, though you give many gifts, the scriptures whispered. Neither will she regard any ransom.

Daphnis’s head remained bowed, but neither prayer nor answer came, only silence.

The creature dropped Alessandra at a bend in the road and pointed to the woods. In the underbrush, just beyond the grassy shoulder, lay a ceramic urn, two feet tall, not including the lid, and a skilled artist had long ago molded intricate figures into its sides.

Alessandra crept forward, dropped to her knees, and pulled the urn to her.

“Careful,” said a woman’s voice.

Alessandra held still, waiting, the sound of her own heartbeat amplified.

“The creature is still hungry from her journey,” continued the voice within her head. “It’s too late to run. It was too late from the moment she chose you. The men who came to visit you, did you find the courage to tell them what you saw? Be careful to tell the truth.”

“He didn’t believe me,” Alessandra said, and she heard the plea in her voice.

“What is a woman’s word? What is her life, in a world run by men? I understand this better than you know.”

“Who are you?” Alessandra asked.

“I’m not the one who should concern you,” said the voice. “You and I are merely tools, used by a god for her own purposes.”

Alessandra glanced back at the creature. “A god?”

“It’s all the same, one side of the grave or the other. That is, unless you have the power to stand up for yourself and take what’s yours.”

Keeping one hand upon the urn, Alessandra clutched the fabric at her bosom.

“Do you know what manner of creature it is that brought you here?”

Alessandra shook her head.

“She’s a herald of power. The goddess she serves will restore to you everything men have taken. Has your god made any such claim?”

“No,” Alessandra whispered.

“My mistress does,” said the voice, “but she needs something from you. She requires entrance into this world, and few means remain. I am one of those mechanisms, but the creature can do nothing with me. That takes the living.”

Alessandra’s hands trembled, and she felt the creature’s presence, behind her, watching, waiting. Refusal would mean her death. She could feel it. Still, perhaps she could welcome death, if it meant not giving in to this damnable beast.

The creature stepped into view.

“You have a child,” said the voice.

The creature transformed, shrinking and folding away its wings until what stood before her was not a monster but her son. Beneath curly locks, elegant eyes pleaded with her. Pouting lips strained against unheard humor, threatening to plump already cherubic cheeks into a smile.

Alessandra’s breath caught in wet, ugly sobs. She’d wither away. She felt it, the rot that grew inside, without hope or direction.

“Don’t,” she pleaded.

The creature took pity on her and became itself once more.

“Men underestimate what a mother will do for her child,” the voice said. “They always have; they always will. You’ve been thrown away, your very soul stolen from you. What you’ve lacked and what you need is power. The goddess will restore your son.”

The presence of the demon faded from Alessandra’s mind. She felt only her son and the distance between them. “What must I do?”

“We’ll do anything the goddess says, and you’ll have your son.”

Alessandra pressed her forehead to the urn’s cool surface. “You promise?”

“I’ve spoken,” said the voice, “and that means more than any man’s promise.”

Alessandra sat upright squared her shoulders. “Tell me what to do.”

After hundreds of years, poverty had hit as hard as neglect. The monastery once depended upon the generosity of local villages, but long ago, the growth of Florence had lured people out of the countryside with the promise of wealth and protection. They abandoned God’s work for the promise of man’s leisure.

So be it, thought Bernardo, Prior of the monastery.

They’d never escape the end, nor would their walls hold back the overflow of God’s wrath. When the sky rolled up like a scroll, all mankind would see and understand. They might shake their fists at heaven and pray from the mountains to fall upon them, but they’d know the truth. Generation upon generation, Bernardo’s order had dedicated their lives to that truth: the world’s end had come.

The side door creaked and a face in a brown hood squinted out into the evening light, blinding as midday against the gloom of the infirmary’s interior. When the monk’s eyes focused, he didn’t look at Bernardo nor at the remnants of the village below, but the graveyard. The prior could almost see him question whether they’d bury another brother in the morning.

“How is he?” Bernardo asked.

“The abbot’s with him,” the monk said. “He’s asking for his jar.”

“Then give it to him, whatever he wants. He’s done all God asked of him and given all he had to give. It’s the least we can do.”

“There is no jar. He didn’t have it with him when he was found.”

Bernardo studied the cold, dark wall of the infirmary and then the woods to the south. “Faithfulness must be rewarded. Have the search party meet me at the stables. If our brother dies tonight, he’ll have what he needs to strengthen his faith in the blessings to come.”

The monk retreated back inside, but Bernardo skirted the building and crossed the open field that separated the dead and dying from Christ’s living church, the dormitory, the cloister, and last of all, the stables. He mounted a horse and, with two of his brethren, followed the road in the direction of Florence.

Silently, he thanked God that neither man asked why he placed so much importance on retrieving the dying man’s jar. They had committed themselves to a life without possessions. Clinging to one now would be foolish.

The last time he’d journeyed this far, patches of snow still clung to the shadowed earth between the trees. Now, the vitality of spring was giving way to a heat that lingered, even after sunset.

“We saw nothing with him,” said one. “Our only concern was in getting him home.”

“I don’t know how he made it as far as he did,” said the other. “You’ve seen his wounds.”

Bernardo had.

The man continued his thought, but over the rhythm of hoof beats on the hard-packed dirt, the words were barely audible. “...like the devil himself had a hold of him.”

The powers of hell had enjoyed their time on earth, but the horrors the coming months would bring, they were straight from the throne of God. Even so, he didn’t rebuke the young monk. No matter how correct one’s theology, the heart always assigned such things to Satan, as if nothing unpleasant, inconvenient, or uncomfortable could ever be the Lord’s good purpose. The world would learn soon enough. Judgment hurt.

He knew the men had other questions. Among them, they’d want to know why God’s wrath had struck against the very men who acted in faith and obedience.

“The death of His people is precious in the eyes of the Lord,” Bernardo said. He intended to say more, but his voice choked; his vision blurred, and he fell silent. Some questions could not be answered with truth. What they needed was peace.

“We’re almost where we found him,” said the elder monk. “He’d fallen from his horse and lay in the road, just around the bend. It was by God’s hand alone we didn’t trample him.”

They pulled back on the reigns, as if still expecting to find him there, and when they rounded the bend a woman stood in the road, her brown hair disheveled but her dress, worn and frayed, suggested the memory of wealth. She stood as if waiting for them, one hand behind her back, the other, trembling, clutched at her bosom. At her feet sat an earthen jar.

Bernardo pulled his horse to a stop, and the others brought up their mounts behind him. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“You’re traveling to the village?” Bernardo asked. “Alone?”

“Anywhere there’s shelter.”

All three dismounted. Bernardo stepped closer. “You’ve been crying.”

“I was alone.”

“A woman shouldn’t travel unaccompanied. It isn’t safe. It isn’t decent.”

She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Again, he stepped closer.

“You came for the urn,” she whispered. “Take it.”

She shook harder now, and he averted his eyes, shamed by her fear and pain. “I’m the prior of San Giovanni. Our hospitium has not had a visitor for nearly a year. You can shelter there, and I’ll have food brought to you.”

She thanked him, but his focus was on the jar. It waited for him at her feet. Larger than he had imagined, it looked old, ancient even, and the figures were not Christian.

He knelt beside it. “You can take my horse. I’ll ride with the others.”

He reached for the jar. Her hand swung out from behind her back, and in it, she held a broad strip of cloth, as if torn from a tunic.

“You wouldn’t want to damage it,” she said.

In the moment before he realized what she had offered, and just as his fingers grazed the surface of the jar, he had the feeling someone was calling out to him. There had been no sound, only a voice, as if crying from within his own soul.

He wrapped the jar and signaled for the others to help.

He’d have to talk to the abbot about the voice. After years spent praying into the silence, the silence had spoken back.

The sky burned at its edge and died in a trail of sparks and ash. At the crossroads, a dog barked at the riders, and then the monastery wall and gate rose up to bar their way. Outside the gatehouse, the hospitium sat quiet and dark. The prior called out for the absent gatekeeper. Alessandra peered around the monk in front of her and then craned to see past the prior who rode at her side. She saw no one. They waited for some reply. None came.

The forward-most monk dismounted and approached a gatehouse perched upon stone legs, between which stood wooden doors. He called out a questioning greeting, his voice pitched and strained. The stone wall swallowed his voice without echo.

By the size and state of the gatehouse, Alessandra assumed the grounds of the monetary to be magnificent and to have fallen into disrepair, with too much work for too few men. She wondered if, with those who died in San Marco, the complex would fall into utter ruin unless Rome chose to save it.

The monk called out again and put his hand to the broad, wooden door. It creaked and shifted under his weight. He pushed harder, revealing a featureless dark that stretched back into immeasurable space, perhaps a foot, perhaps forever.

“Open the other side,” the prior called. To Alessandra, he said. “This is irregular. It may be some time before we get you settled.”

The monk pushed the outer doors to their limits and paused, as if the night were waiting to be invited inside. Alessandra saw the outlines of walls, but nothing more. The monk probed forward with his hands and feet until he reached the far doors. They, too, moved at his touch, and he pulled them open, revealing the sweep of the monastery grounds.

They rode through, and horses stomped and snorted uneasily in unseen stables. The prior carried the urn, wrapped in a piece of her own tunic. They crossed the forbury and dismounted outside the westernmost edge of the church.

“Stay on your horse,” the prior said. “The others will get you situated in the hospitium.”

Alessandra dismounted and stood facing him. “I watched over the urn until your return.”

The prior’s face was a prelude to rebuke, but she was first to speak, cutting him off. Her words were simple and honest, but she heard the emotion that welled up within them. For all her candor, she hid a deep well of fear and swelling need. She could not be sent back. The man she was meant to see lay upon his death bed, and though his death meant nothing, the monks were gathering to him--the same monks who sent their ill-fated brethren to Florence. They shared the same desire to see the judgment of God poured forth upon a world that had forgotten them, but without her, they’d fail. The voice of the urn had promised her this. They lacked her determination, and where they’d fallen short before, they’d fall short again, unless she spoke to them on behalf of the urn and the voice they feared to hear.

“I pulled it out of its hiding place,” she said.

“You weren’t protecting the jar for us,” he said, “and if you want to make some claim of ownership--”

“I want to pay my respects and visit your dying friend.”

He turned away from her. “That’s impossible. We’re providing you shelter and food, as is our Christian duty. No one owes you this.”

“Touch the urn.”

He stopped. The other monks moved their horses closer.

“Put your hand upon the urn,” she said.

He hesitated, and even in the darkness, she saw him tremble.

“You’ve touched it already, haven’t you?” she asked.

“What was that I heard? Have you heard it, too?”

“Take me to your friend,” she said.

He looked at her differently now, with desperation and respect, and she knew these were symptoms of a newly kindled hope. He nodded, and she followed as he left the church and continued on to another set of buildings farther back, at the moonlit edge of darkness.

—Thaddeus Thomas

Table of Contents: The Sibyliad