"Dreaming men are haunted men."
--Benet

"Lost are we, and only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire."
--Dante, Inferno IV, 41, 42

o you think he will touch us?"

"Don't be stupid. If he touched everyone here, it would take all of his time. Do you think our holy father has nothing better to do than rub your ugly head?"

I listened abstractedly to the conversation between two young acolytes. I stood jammed into the courtyard before the papal palace with hundreds of others, all waiting to receive the blessing of the father of the Holy Church, Pope Clement. The air was dead here in this walled enclosure, and although it was not hot, I found it hard to breathe freely. In fact, most of Avignon had a stench rivaled only by the bilge one could find in my native harbor.

We had traveled for twelve days, and had arrived in this place early this very morning. After paying a small toll, we crossed the magnificent bridge, built two-hundred years ago by the boy Benezet, who had been so ordered by the Savior himself. I pondered the significance of this in relation to my own situation, but I found no enlightenment.

Once within, the first thing that came to me was the squalorous stench of the place. We traveled narrow streets, choked with people, where human wastes were dumped out of windows and doorways, and where walking through such matter was unavoidable. I skipped and dodged about both obstacles as best I could, guiding the nervous mule through random twists while Nicolas urged him on with his whip.

The din which met our ears was as bad as the smell. Despite the early hour, merchants of every type competed vocally with beggars, hawkers and their freaks, and members of the clergy. Some of these last were barely identifiable as men of the Church. They dressed very much like nobles, in bright colors trimmed with gold or fur, and they wore heavy rings on their fingers. When I asked Nicolas about these men, he explained that they were "pardoners", clergymen who sold absolution to those too busy or lazy to do normal penance.

One could be absolved for any sin thinkable, had one enough gold to pay for it. A priest could pay penance in gold for sins of the flesh, be it with nuns or common strumpets. Furthermore, he could obtain authorization to live in concubinage with females. A man who killed his wife would be charged considerably less than this for the Lord's forgiveness, and so on. Most of the money they collected for these services never found its way back to the Church, but rather ended up in their own pockets.

Nicolas related all of this with an air of distaste. And when I later questioned him about the gaudy and barely clad women who called out to us, laughing, from open doorways along the street, his terse and rather graphic explanation left me wide-eyed and with ears burning. Nicolas then fell into one of his fits of mumbling, and I knew better than to pursue these subjects further.

Of course, to me it all seemed like Heaven. Such a riot of colors I had never seen. I viewed the goods available for sale with the practiced eye of my father. It seemed that anything could be gotten in this place. The people were invariably dressed in fine clothes, even down to the lowliest page. Even the beggars seemed to fare better here.

Then we rounded a bend in the street and I gasped and reined up the mule dead in the street. The Papal Palace was vast. It loomed above us on an outcropping of rock overlooking the Rhone. It was a huge mass of towers and rooftops; nothing seemed to match anything else. Despite this, it was very impressive. It seemed to glow with its own light, reflecting the bright morning sun from its spires. It looked to me like the fortress of heaven might, presiding in judgement over Hell.

I had never seen anything like it. I insisted to Nicolas that we must visit immediately, so that I could receive the Papal blessing. Of course, my main motivation was to simply experience the place, but my assertion that I needed Holy intervention on my behalf was not pure fiction. Nicolas must have understood both my enthusiasm and my desperation, for after a few murmured objections he acquiesced.

But Nicolas himself refused to accompany me, muttering something about finding directions to the monastery where we sought to spend the night. I did not argue with him; my eyes were filled with the great looming presence above.

Now, however, I began to wonder if this was worth the trip. I had already stood here for at least an hour, and I was quite some distance from the raised dais from which the Pope would address the faithful. The two acolytes had been chased off to another part of the courtyard when they began to tussle with one another, and were replaced by a large, sweaty man in rich but too-soiled velvets, who filled most of my view. Just as I began to consider leaving to return later, a murmur of excitement ran through the crowd. I struggled to see around the large man, and caught a glimpse of a carmine-robed figure upon the dais, hand upraised. I tried to stand on my toes, but this proved too difficult in the shifting crowd, so at last I tried to content myself with watching the hand, which remained in my view.

It was heavy with rings, that hand. It moved back and forth rhythmically, catching the sun and sending shards of light into my eyes in staccato pulses. Someone pressed into my back and drove me into the heavy figure in front of me. I struggled to breathe, eyes fixed still upon the shimmering hand, as I was carried forward a few steps by the shifting crowd. A desperate murmur of supplication rose from many throats, and I found myself using the last of my breath to join in the strange, ululating cry. The rhythm of it seemed to match the movement of the hand as its light shimmered in my eyes...

I had been laboring for an eternity to reach the top. All around me was a dismal, bluish light. The rocks under my bare feet were sharp. The air was very cold, made almost unbearably colder by the powerful wind that often gusted over me, carrying past me what seemed, in the gloom, to be naked bodies, prodded along by dark-winged forms. But for an occasional, stunted bit of scrub oak, there was no vegetation, just barren, razor-sharp rock, which cut my bare feet with every step. I paused in my ascent. The air that whistled about my ears carried upon it a faint moaning, a note of lamentation from below. But when I looked downward over my shoulder, I could see nothing but darkness. Above me was my goal: a mighty cathedral perched high atop the crags upon which I climbed. It shone with a brilliant, warm glow, beckoning me from darkness into its golden heart. The many crosses atop its roof reached toward the heavens, warning back the forces of despair which seethed below me.

As I climbed, my feet grew numb. The blood upon them made the rocks slippery, and many times I fell, arms outstretched, upon the rocks' cruel edges. And every time dolor overtook me, I had but to look above for inspiration to continue on.

As I reached the high places, a path began to form before me, at first only a few inches wide, then almost two spans. I limped along it gratefully. It seemed to wind about the mountain, so that whenever I looked upward and to my right, I saw a different angle of the magnificent cathedral. I came around a bend in the road and stopped short. My path now carried me among heavy slabs of stone, each ajar over a square pit. From each of these holes poured sulfurous gases which made me choke as I wended my way among them. Some of the holes were obviously occupied, as I could hear moaning and wailing from within them. I did not pause again, but hobbled steadfastly along.

Another bend in the road brought me away from the foul crypts and into a small wood, composed of stunted trees and thick, tangled cobwebs, supporting fat, flesh-colored spiders. Off to my left something moved. I looked to see a spider that was not a spider, for its body was that of a woman, with a spider's eight legs. She reached her hands out to me and mouthed silent words. I continued on.

At long last I reached the top of the mountain. Before me stood the welcoming, opened doors of the grand cathedral. As I approached, the head of the gargoyle over the door suddenly turned to regard me. Its diamond eyes appraised me coldly, and then it turned away, becoming inanimate once more.

It was warm inside the cathedral. Its high ceiling vaulted triumphantly above me, sparkling with gold leaf. A high rose window let in golden light, which dappled the scarlet carpet at my feet. I turned to look behind me, to see if the darkness outside had been dispelled, but the double doors had fallen silently shut. Row after row of uniform pews lined either side, their wood polished to a gleam. Yet, the smell of dust and oldness filled the place.

I was overcome with a strange sense of elation. I turned to face the altar, where two carved wooden figures stood. The savior hung larger than life on the cross, bleeding from thousands of wounds, head bowed under the weight of His thorny crown. Behind Him and to the left stood the Virgin, dressed in robes of blue and gold, hands clasped in piety, a smile of peace and assurance on Her face. I approached the altar slowly, and at each step the vision before me filled me with greater awe. Here was craftsmanship as I had never seen before. The detail and accuracy of the carving were magnificent. On the face of the savior was an expression of transcendent pain, a face twisted not into a grimace but molded into some deeper understanding of suffering. It was just what I had felt...when? I knew somehow that it was important that I find an answer. Who was I? I searched my memory for a name. I remembered something someone had said once, (a thousand years ago?)... I would like to know if it was as Dante described it... had they been talking to me or about me? I could not remember.

Shrugging, I continued on my course down the cathedral's long aisle. A cold draft suddenly shivered its way over my back, making me acutely aware that I was bare of clothing.

As I arrived at the prie-dieu before the alter, I knelt and folded my hands over the railing, gazing raptly into the tortured face of the effigy. It was so real, I almost expected it to...

The expression changed abruptly. The corners of the mouth turned upward, from a grimace to a smile. The glass eyes rolled downward in their sockets, turning away from heaven and resting on me. The ethereal quality went out of them and was replaced by the more earthly quality of humor.

I gazed, mesmerized, as the lips began to move and words flowed out. "I see that you have finally arrived. I have been calling to you for some time."

"Calling me? I...don't...why me?" There was a sudden prickling on my neck.

"Because, my son, you have a certain quality that I need."

I waited for him.. it... Him to say more, but He simply looked back at me, now once more like a statue, frozen. "What could this be?" I whispered, half to myself.

"You are an arrow," He said. I jumped. "Pulled taut in a bowstring. The arm of someone very powerful trembles with the strain of holding it. He aims truly, but must await the right time to release the arrow.

"You, boy, are aimed at the heart of an immortal. You shall be the hand of my wrath on earth."

I recoiled in shock. I started quickly away from the railing, but the glass eyes in the wooden head followed me. Suddenly, everything was very wrong here. I tried to slow my breathing, gave up and blurted, "But who am I to be so chosen? I don't understand... I don't... Who am I?" The scream echoed from the ceiling and walls of the chapel, but I could see that it was useless to expect an answer. The face of the statue had lost all of its unnatural life, had returned to its agony.

I backed away, still shaking violently, and was about to turn my back to the altar when what I saw next froze me where I stood.

The face of the Virgin, moments before a vision of bliss and sublime purity, had changed. Her expression was now one of lascivious glee, hatred, and scorn all combined into one chilling leer. A masculine voice pounded within my skull. "And I am your enemy, always. I am with you wherever you go. I am your redemption and your damnation. My gift will become your Hell. I will be waiting for you, nameless one, I will be waiting in the flesh."

Then she dropped her gaze once again, and her face went back to its former peace. That peace seemed obscene to me now, and I think it was anger at the defilement of such beauty that allowed me to walk calmly down the aisle and from the chapel, though my legs trembled with the need to flee.

Everything had changed. The ground was now flat, with a white mist flowing sullenly along the ground, occasionally parting to expose white stone burial monuments. These were different from the infernal things I had come across earlier, more earthly and more peaceful. I calmed somewhat. I remembered that I had never feared the dead as much as the living.

I walked aimlessly between the many stones and wooden crosses. A half moon sometimes appeared from behind feathery wisps of cloud overhead, only to be obscured again.

As I walked, the headstones gave way to widely spaced mausoleums, all tightly barred save one, the gate of which creaked back and forth despite the lack of wind. I moved toward it, and as I did, the moon once again appeared in a break in the clouds. It was now full. I entered the tomb.

The ceiling was low, and the room itself was but ten paces across. The raised stone coffin on the far side of the room gave off a slight bluish evanescence which illuminated things enough for me to see that I was not alone.

Sitting upon the chiseled coffin lid was a man in a long white robe. His aquiline features and stooping posture reminded me of someone, but I was not able to remember who. The man wore a laurel wreath upon his head after the Roman fashion, and he had a gentle smile upon his face. I decided I liked him.

"So you have come," he said, "I was not sure that you would find me. Your heart guides you well."

"I?" I said, haltingly. "I did not try to come here. I...just arrived. What is this place?"

He smiled. "A place as good as any other. I find it soothing here, among those who sleep, don't you? Ah, but I am displaying poor manners. You may call me Riothamus. And you are...?"

I looked at the floor, shuffled my feet, looked back at him. "I am... Dante?"

His smile became a pleasant grin and he shook his head slightly from side to side, chuckling. "As for how you got here, let us suffice to say that your need brought you here. You have a remarkable strength, Alix."

Alix! That was my name! A sudden flood of memory sent me reeling, but gentle hands caught me and helped me to a sitting position on the floor. Alix! I had been awakened within a dream. My entire life passed before me in a lightning procession. My father, my mother, the abbey, Brother Nicolas, the dreams--

The Dreams! This sent my mind spinning again. If this was a dream now... I knew that it was, but everything around me had solidity, not the ephemeral quality of sleep. The stone was cold, my breath made steam, the muscles of my back were taut...

Wherever I was, I felt that I was safe. I looked up into the smiling face of the man, and I realized that he bore some small resemblance to Brother Nicolas, but without the unassuming quality. This man was a hawk to Nicolas' dove. I shook my head to clear it.

"I am the dreamer, so you must be the dream..."

"No. Not exactly."

"Then who are you?"

"That is of little importance, really. It is more a matter of 'who was I?' This I will tell you another time. But right now, time is in short supply. As we speak, they are trying to awaken you. Only distance saves us. You are very far from the realm of light. Listen carefully to me.

"You are not what any of them say you are. You are less and you are much more. You have great power. Remember this." As he spoke, I began to feel a great distance growing between us. Things seemed more as they should in a dream, less immediate, less real. "And you may always come here in your need. This place is yours, as am I." As he said this, he clasped his hands before him and bowed to me.

Darkness fell.

Light flickered redly through my eyelids. I opened them and squinted at the candle flame inches from my face. The candle withdrew, leaving spots in my vision. I lifted my head to see that I was in a small chamber with Brother Nicolas and a monk I had never seen before. Both of them had their eyes locked on me. The monk's brow was knit, forming a deep crevice in the middle of his forehead. He had a wild look to him, the kind you see in men who fear most everything.

"Boy! Can you hear me, Alix? Alix?" I nodded. I felt incredibly groggy, and the candlelight hurt my eyes. I said, "The candle," and then "No!" when the monk misunderstood and brought it closer.

Nicolas, seeing me cringe, pushed the other man back and said, "Some wine, brother, if you please. And could you tell the abbot that the boy is well, and thank him for his concern? My thanks, brother."

Nicolas heaved a great, shuddering sigh. "Here, drink this." I sipped a little of the water he held to my lips. "Alix,you have been... asleep for nearly ten hours, and you have this entire sanctuary alight with rumor. We brought you back here after your... attack."

Attack? I forced the words out: "What did I do?" Part of me did not want to know.

"Well, I wasn't there for all of it, but by accounts I have pieced together, you went rigid as a board, turned stone-cold white, and fell flat on your back. After that you just lay there and moaned softly, and many thought you were dying of a seizure of the brain..."

"Wait! Many?" I gritted my teeth together and said between them, "Where did this happen?"

Nicolas stared at me solemnly for a moment. "You don't remember? Ah, well, hum, you were in the palace, with all the others, receiving the blessing of the Pope."

My head began to throb violently. Just then, the door opened and the old monk returned with a cup of wine. He stared at me unabashedly. I stared back and he finally looked away. Nicolas took the wine from him and helped me drink some. "Alix, you have an odd sense of timing. Anyway, that was when I arrived. As soon as I heard the commotion, I had a feeling it had something to do with you. It took me quite some time to push my way through the crowd you attracted. Someone called out that it was a miracle, and soon the word was spilling from every mouth there. I was about three people away from you when you cried out, "Deus Irae, Deus Irae!" That quieted them down a little. When at last I was able to drag you away, I persuaded a couple of brothers of the faith to help me transport you to the cart so I could bring you here. One of them made some sort of superstitious sign with his hand and refused to touch you, only your clothing." He shook his head and sighed.

Mad God, Mad God! No wonder the man had been frightened. The whole idea was scaring me!

I felt a thump on my chest and opened my eyes. Nicolas had moved two steps across the chamber to shutter the window, and the old monk now stood over me. It was his finger that I felt tapping my chest. His hand trembled as he said, "It grows crowded in there. No man should possess more than one soul, and no man's soul should be possessed by another." Then he whirled and stalked from the room, just as Nicolas moved to intervene. He turned in the doorway and glowered at Nicolas, then at me, and closed the door after him.

I stole quietly across the courtyard and into the field beyond, where stood our cart. I looked to see Nicolas arriving with our mule. He had tied pieces of rag around the bridle, to keep its jingling from awakening the slumbering brethren within. I piled the small amount of gear I carried into the cart as Nicolas hitched the mule to it.

We had decided it would be wise to leave Avignon before news of my "vision" traveled to unwelcome ears. The last thing I needed was the attention of doomsayers and penitents, or worse, more officious members of the clerical elite. Nicolas felt certain that we would be accosted before tomorrow's end, and my dream had left me feeling disturbed enough that I did not question his judgment.

I steered the cart into the road that ran along the silent Rhone. We passed the cemetery belonging to the little monastery. Here, I knew, they had buried Peter of Corbario, whom the Romans had set up as anti-pope in opposition to Pope John XXII. I wondered if the whole thing had been his idea, or if he had been a victim of powers beyond his control. I wondered what became of his soul. At long last I ceased wondering and offered a little prayer for him, to St Jude, patron of lost causes.

At last we were beyond the monastery's fences and on our way to our destination, a place whose name had come to instill terror in all those the Church called enemy: Toulouse, center of the Holy Inquisition.

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