Posted especially for Jenny because she asked so nicely and is such a lovely sister :)
In another part of the ruins we came to what appeared to be an old schoolroom, there was a blackboard still on one wall, and chalk in a pot that looked like it had been made by a child. He handed me a piece of chalk making it was obvious that he wanted me to draw the strange circle again. I had to shut my eyes and really concentrate to remember it clearly.
“I’m not sure…” I started to stammer. But he silenced me by placing his finger on my lips, and he guided me to the blackboard.
“Just relax, and let your hand draw,” he whispered.
Upon opening my eyes, the drawing was there before me, smaller but otherwise just like it had been on the chapel floor. I had no idea how long it had taken, but it had darkened outside now. This time I knew I had drawn it - and that I had to find out what it meant.
“Did this diagram call you? I asked.
He nodded and his fingers traced the pattern I had drawn.
“I can teach you some of what you need to know, but we have much to do.”
I now had a million more questions, but it really was getting dark and I needed to organise somewhere more suitable to sleep. The small room with the chest of old clothes seemed the logical place. This time he did not just disappear; he helped me move a few things around. By the time we had finished, I had a comfortable spot on a pile of old clothes. I was warm enough, fed, and tired. I was also in desperate need of a bath, but that could wait, especially as I hadn’t seen anything to heat water with, and I had never been fond of cold baths.
“You still haven’t told me your name?” I questioned him the next morning.
“You have not told me yours,” he retorted.
“But you brought me here, you must know who I am, what you want with me?”
“It has been a long time since anyone has called me. Even longer since I have responded. I do not have the answer to either question yet.” Was his frustrating reply.
“Come on” he said, “lets get to work.”
As we walked, I told him my name and how I got it. The nuns at the orphanage had named me, after St Jude. We had spent a lot of time learning about all the saints. There were a great many - and we had to learn and remember their lives and deaths in detail. Those of us that lived past the age of eleven and a half got a name rather than a number. It was usually selected to humiliate us somehow. St Jude was, and still is I guess, the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless cases – with me falling into the latter category, and with apparently no redeeming features.
The name gave all the nuns endless amusement. When I was smaller, they often joked about the myriad of different unpleasant ways in which I would probably die in physical agony or spiritual longing. It often gave me nightmares. However, I outgrew it, and it annoyed them more every passing year as I became hardened to the taunts.
He had listened in silence as I rambled on about the orphanage and it is naming practices. We reached a cobbled area with a heavy grill. He pulled it up with seeming unlimited strength and we descended worn stone steps into a large chamber and a rabbit warren of tunnels and smaller rooms. It had obviously been a torture chamber of some kind once, as some of the instruments even now hung from the walls. They still looked menacing but there was no evidence of blood, just a thick layer of dust and a lacy weave of cobwebs hanging everywhere - almost to our waists in some places.
I followed him as he swept the cobwebs out of the way and we bent slightly to get into and through one of the tunnels. It was narrow and dark and the walls felt damp. It opened onto another large chamber. He must have had matches or something handy, because a light flared and he lit the candles on the walls.
“A library,” I exclaimed in delight as I clasped my hands together.
It was dusty in this chamber too, but without the cobwebs. Every wall was covered in floor to ceiling glass cabinets. Without waiting to be asked, I moved to the closest shelves and started scanning the books on display. I loved reading and I had never seen such a delicious collection of rich and varied titles.
“Over here,” he called as he opened a locked cupboard over to the side. “These books will help you to understand who you are.”
I headed over to where he knelt in front of the open doors. I could see a small key on a chain around his neck, before it disappeared inside his shirt again. He told me to shut my eyes and take out a book.
“It’s another book about Saints,” I exclaimed as I opened up the small book I had pulled out at random. “Oh, but it’s not saints! Its, it’s about witches and wizards?”
He took the book from me and flipped through the pages before handing it back. “It’s a good one for you to start with” he said, and added “this history is much more important to you than anything you might want to learn about the saints.”
I felt like telling him I had not chosen to learn anything at all about any saints, but I held my tongue.
“Am I a witch?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Well that doesn’t make any sense at all! There are a lot of people I would have turned into toads if I could have done…” I laughed but my voice trailed off under the intensity of his gaze.
“Maybe you have,” he said holding my eyes in his for several seconds.
I felt myself blushing and started looking at the other books in the cupboard. Many did not have titles, but looked very, very old. Others had writing in a language I could not read. I felt a powerful draw to read all of them. One in particular–a huge and beautifully bound book in rich burgundy leather- reminded me of the Bible in the chapel, it was always kept open on the stand in front of the alter. Its gilded pages glowed a deep bronze in the late afternoon sun in summer.
“Not yet” he cautioned as my hands reached for it. “You will know when you’re ready.”
