Serial fiction/ Christian fiction/ Medieval romance

The House of God — Part Ten (Last Part)

A startling discovery adds newfound significance to the journey

A note: This short novella was written in Bulgarian in my twenties. I’ve decided to translate it and share it with you this month. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Start with the previous parts:

June 24, year 1135

It’s warm now, miraculously warm for a place that is surrounded by clouds like an enormous, ragged white belt. The storm lasted one day, exactly as Peter had predicted.

Peter…

I close my eyes, but my hands keep writing, one letter over the other, words jumbled and probably, incomprehensible.

I’ll miss you, Peter…

I open my eyes and I see that a teardrop had fallen on the ink, splattering the last word. ‘Peter’ now doesn’t read like ‘Peter’. It reads like…

We were so close to the summit. So close.

We had reached its base — a circular landing covered by a creaking crust of snow — and when we looked up, we could see the almost vertical rocks leading up to the small rectangular area above. This area, too, was covered by snow, but it was wide and even enough to hold all of us for an hour or two. This was the much-deserved break we had decided to allow ourselves once we reached it. Peter said he would marry me and Winston during that break, with Kolskeg as our witness.

‘So, you’re a priest in the end,’ Winston’s cracked, bluish lips formed a smile. We were standing on the landing, huddled close together, while Peter uncoiled his rope to tie it around the rocks as he had done at every crossing for the last day. He would climb the slippery, huge rocks, testing each one for stability and finding the best passage, thus securing the route for the rest of us.

How many times had he risked his life for us? I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I thought he was immortal.

I’m thinking about it now, though.

How many times?

Peter smiled back at Winston.

‘Everyone is a priest, my friend.’

‘Enigmatic until the end,’ Winston winked at him. He shot a glance at Kolskeg, who stood with his back to the wall of stone, carrying, as always, the heavier part of our luggage, ‘And you? Have you decided already where to dig?’

‘Yes,’ Kolskeg nodded toward the cloudy distance, ‘I’ll try northwards. Seems most promising. I’ll need to check again from up there before I make my final decision, though.’

‘Well,’ Peter said, finishing the knot around the edge of the landing. ‘I’m going, then. I’ll be waiting for you there.’

He gave us one last look of an unimaginable serenity — had the sun come out from behind a cloud and peeked from inside his eyes? — and grabbed the edge of the nearest rock.

He started climbing.

We could see his body getting smaller as he went higher and higher, the brown rope winding in his tracks like the pet snakes of some of the African tribes we had met during the travel. Then, just as he reached for the last rock that would lead him onto the rectangular summit area, he lost his footing.

Did his hands slip? Or his feet? Was it a treacherous rock above, or one beneath? How come he couldn’t sense the danger this time? We never understood, and I guess we never will.

The only thing we knew was that his body was torn off the ridge and with a short, muffled cry, he flew down into the abyss.

I remembered that I screamed. I remember hurling myself toward the edge of the landing, feeling Winston’s strong hands holding me back, and hearing his scream, too. Then both he and Kolskeg rushed toward the edge, flanking me on both sides, and then they looked down, and Kolskeg’s throaty shout pierced the air: ‘I can see him!’ And Winston wheezed: ‘Where? Where? Is he alive?’ ‘I don’t know! There? See, there’s another landing below, he fell on it!’ ‘Yes, yes, I can see him now!’

Quickly, Winston freed himself from all the luggage and, sizing up the rocks beneath us, stepped forward, carefully putting one leg below the edge of the landing.

‘Winston!’ I screamed.

‘It’s okay!’ he said, ‘I think I can see a safe way down. I need to go help him, Hazel. Kolskeg, stay here with her, please. Keep her safe for me.’

We watched his slow progress through the dazzling whiteness and while he was climbing down, the sun came out and turned the mountains into an ocean of gold. The snow became impossible to look at and I closed my eyes, praying to be dreaming.

This can’t be happening! It’s not happening! It’s not real!

But it was real. The small figure of Winston, kneeling beside Peter’s body in the distance, was real. His fidgeting around it, and then just remaining kneeling, head buried in our friend’s coat, was real, too.

Real was the passage of time during which Winston remained completely still — more than half an hour. Finally, trembling, I turned to Kolskeg:

‘Let’s go!’

He nodded, and without realizing how, I found myself climbing down in Winston’s wake. Kolskeg was behind me, supporting me, and I couldn’t feel my body or the surroundings: there was just my spirit now, moving through the vastness of eternity.

I collapsed down by Winston and Peter.

Winston looked up at me. Tears were streaming down his frostbitten face. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t.

I grabbed Peter’s hand. The glove was sticky with snow, and the flesh beneath it — ice cold.

Peter’s face was ashen, and his open, glossy eyes were fixed on a sky that grew bluer and closer to us by the moment.

I shook the motionless hand.

‘No!’ I whispered, ‘You can’t do this! You can’t do this to us! You can’t leave us! You can’t!’

I think if it weren’t for Kolskeg to bring us to our senses, Winston and me would have remained on that landing forever and died along with our hapless friend. But the Scandinavian, despite being seemingly no less shaken by what had happened, had stronger urges to survive than us. He kept screaming at us for a long time, listing various reasons to move, until finally, we found the strength to get up and follow his relentless orders.

‘We need to bury him here in the snow, ‘Kolskeg said, wiping his sweaty face with his enormous hand. ‘We can’t take him anywhere else!’

Winston nodded.

‘Let’s see if he carried anything that he’d like us to have, ‘ Kolskeg continued.

Winston nodded again.

‘Are you going to search through his clothes or am I?’ Kolskeg asked.

Winston nodded for the third time. Kolskeg glared at him, growled through his teeth, and knelt. His hands moved dexterously over Peter’s body, opening clothes, untying belts, and checking pockets. He retrieved Peter’s knife, flintstone, water flask, and a few small items of clothing. Then he stopped, holding something else before his eyes.

‘What?’ I asked listlessly, seeing his shoulders sagging in obvious frustration, as he tried to discern the meaning of the object in his hand.

‘I can’t read,’ he said darkly. Turning around, he handed me a folded piece of paper. ‘ I found it in his inner pocket. Had to tear up the lining to get it, it was so well hidden.’

My hands were so numb that I could hardly feel the roughness of the paper beneath my fingers as I opened it and looked down.

It was quite a large, solid parchment, like those they place on pub walls to notify the citizens of an escaped criminal or an important public event. There was a sketch of a face, and below it, a text that I read with a certain difficulty, for a reason I’ll mention shortly:

Charles Oldman and his three fellow monks from the Scottish monastery will join the crew of the sailing ship ‘Saint Mary’ on Saturday, May 3, 1125, at Bristol harbor, from where they will embark on their long journey to India. Anyone wishing to bid them farewell is welcome at the harbor square at noon.

I blinked. I dimly remembered those notices spread around my city when I was a child: neither I nor Mom managed to or were willing to, go to see the legendary man off, but the hustle and bustle of that day remained in my mind. It wasn’t the notice that took me aback, despite the illogicality of its presence — why would Peter keep a notice of Charles Oldman’s activities in his clothes?— but rather the letters that were scribbled on top of the text.

I stared, feeling the blood curdle in my veins, and the world thin before my eyes.

Over the carefully lettered content of the notice, three black and distorted words stood, blocking half of the notice and, as I mentioned earlier, making it quite difficult to read.

I GOT SCARED.

And the sketch…the sketch of the man’s face on top of the notice…

The paper slipped through my fingers and landed quietly on the white ground.

‘Winston…oh, my God…’

‘What?’ he stepped towards me, his voice hardly audible. I started sobbing, pointing to the ground.

‘It was…the whole time…it was…Winston…’

Winston picked up the paper and looked at it.

His face became whiter than the snow beneath his feet.

‘No…’ he whispered.

The face, drawn over the text of the document, was that of Charles Oldman. The face of a smiling, and yet pensive young man. Only twenty at the time. His unruly chestnut curls fell on his high forehead and his eyes were sparkling even on the old paper.

Charles Oldman…and Peter Weller.

Our Peter.

Our Peter was looking at us from the drawing, smiling at us, encouraging us from across time and space, from the enthusiasm of his youth, from his dreams of grandeur and his deep spiritual yearnings.

Go!, the drawings seemed to urge, Go! Go! Go!

And below it, the big, contorted, black words:

I got scared.

‘It was him,’ I couldn’t stop sobbing, ‘the whole time, it was him…Peter was Charles Oldman…I thought God had stopped talking to me, but He was talking through him…through him…’

‘No…that’s not possible. No,’ shaking his head, Winston turned his dim eyes toward the lying figure. The listless face of Peter looked older, but it was the same as the face on the notice. ‘Charles Oldman was…he went to…’

‘Yeah,’ I raised a hand to wipe my eyes, ‘He..he went to India. He climbed. But he…he must have given up at some point. The conditions must have been rough and he must have thought he was unworthy of God’s help. He must have started sinking, like Apostle Peter in the sea, and instead of crying out, ‘God, I’m sinking, save me!’, he must have simply…

‘Simply fled?

‘Yes. Fled.’

‘And he changed his name? And hid from the world?’

‘Yeah, because of…because of shame…oh, Winston…that night…he wanted me to assure him he’d do it this time. That he’ll succeed. He was so desperate. The night in the cave, during the storm. You had to see him…’

‘Yes, I remember. He wasn’t feeling well.’ Winston’s eyes slowly cleared, as he continued to gaze at Peter. He remained motionless for some time and then wiped his tears away.

Slowly, he knelt by the body once again. He leaned forward and kissed Peter’s forehead.

‘You did it this time,’ he whispered. ‘You reached the summit. And not only that. You made it possible for us to reach it, too. And we’ll do it, brother. We’ll do it.’

‘What’s happening?’ Kolskeg’s deep voice made me jump. He stood, hands on his hips, his eyes darting from me to Winston, his brows furrowed.

Winston closed Peter’s eyelids and stood up, meeting the Scandinavian’s gaze.

‘A miracle,’ he smiled. ‘A miracle’s happening.’

Three hours later:

We’ve allowed ourselves half an hour’s rest after Peter’s burial. I’m sitting at the edge of the landing, writing in my book. From time to time, my eyes dart towards the snowy summit and the brown rope leading to it.

We’ll start climbing in a while. And when we reach the top, I’ll leave my book there. Next to it, I’ll light the candle I carry with me. To let Peter see how far he got.

How far we all got.

And to let him see that he, our priest, managed to teach us what he wanted from the very beginning — that this summit won’t be the last one. That during our lives, we’ll constantly climb insurmountable heights, one after the other, and with each, we’ll become better people.

Until one day, we reach the house of God.

The end

I want to express my hearty thanks to everyone who shared this journey with me. It started as a simple translation of an almost-forgotten story, but, as I needed to edit and literary rewrite a big part of the text, it turned into a life-like experience for me. I was happy to spend some time with my old characters and I hope you enjoyed them, too!

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