The Golden Kingdom

When Sister Adela opened her eyes, she wished the nuns had come up with a better time of day to pray their matins. It was dark, and she was not feeling well, but Adela knew her duties came first, so she arranged the bed for when she came back and wore her habit with pride.

‘I am getting too old for this.’ she whispered on her way out.

It had taken hours to make her small room warm enough to stop her weary bones from aching, and now she had to abandon her sweet sleep and go pray for souls that sometimes could not be saved. She knew where her pains came from: hours of sitting and smelling the paints she used to illuminate the manuscripts that would be read in the great minsters of England. She was always thinking about the golden tint she used to create the big letters that gave way to the first paragraphs of the Bible, and the bright yellows and reds…those lead-based pigments were different from the ones she used in her own writings. The convent’s gold leaf sparkled like a light God gifted to humans, yet her metallic gold shone as if He had granted her eternal life.

Adela’s task was as important as the other sisters’, the ones who copied the books, and she usually joked about how she could paint as well as write, unlike the others. She always enjoyed playing with different powders that made bright and powerful colors.

As Adela made her way down the corridor flanked by stone walls, she saw the rows of nuns that got together to pray in the middle of the night. No one was missing: they were a devout order.

‘O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me. O Lord, Thou wilt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.’ said Aethelburg, the Reverend Mother, as soon as she entered the chapel.

‘Thy praise.’ the nuns answered.

‘A reading of the psalm of David.’ she continued as they all made the sign of the cross. One of the youngest sisters, Juliana, climbed up to the center of the room and started reading one of the colossal books on the lectern.

‘Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, God will not deliver him. But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.’ Juliana paused. ‘I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.’

A solitary owl hooted in the middle of the reading. Tonight Adela was distracted, her head seemed to be pounding against a hard wall. She was feeling quite ill.

‘Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.’

‘Amen.’ they spoke again in a chorus.

It was finally over. Before they each returned to their cells for the rest of the night, they made sure all the candles were blown out, and all the doors locked. Living in the middle of the countryside made them wary of their limitations. Adela, feeling as tired as ever, returned to her cell and fell immediately into an oblivious, deep slumber from which she would not awake in the morning.

It was sister Juliana who found Adela. She had never seen a corpse before. Gasping and making the sign of the cross, she ran down the hallway to get the Reverend Mother. Juliana could not stop the tears running down her cheeks, it was difficult to breathe when her loss had been so terrible.

Mother Aethelburg checked her pulse. ‘Her heart seems to have stopped.’

‘Oh dear Mother, what a cruel world we live in!’ said Juliana as she fell on her knees and prayed.

‘She is finally at rest, free from all that tied her to this world. She will be with God.” said Aethelburg, putting a hand on Juliana’s shoulder.

The nuns gathered in the small cell one by one, shedding tears of sorrow on Adela. They prepared her body and began the vigil. The Dies Irae echoed inside the convent walls. No one from the outside world knew of her death, no one from the outside world heard their chant.

‘I shall be sad for eternity,’ Sister Algiva sighed. ‘She was a remarkable woman.’

‘Bless her soul.’ Sister Gertrud echoed.

Juliana remembered the days of her novitiate when Adela had taken charge of her education. She had been a sweet, wise woman, who spent much time in the forest gathering the berries she would later give to the younger nuns. Adela had been her motherly figure in the convent: she had taken care of Juliana since the beginning.

After the ceremonies, Juliana was left alone in Adela's cell to choose what to keep and what to give away to the Shaftesbury poor houses. It broke her heart to see what had been the life of Adela vanishing alongside her scarce earthly possessions. As she went through her belongings she prayed for her soul in Heaven.

‘We will all die someday, and we pray to be raised in the glory of God.’ she whispered, folding the old nun's habit. It was when she undid the sheets that a book fell on the floor, landing open at the foot of the bed.

Juliana picked the manuscript up, the leather covers worn out by time and use. A strong smell flooded the room, of leather and oil, of metal and lead, of paints. Inside the brown pages, Juliana saw drawings of the most beautiful plants she had ever seen, illuminated in the brightest green and red, with bits of gold reflecting the dim light that came through the window. She also saw the moon and stars just as they were up in Heaven. The young nun was instantly drawn to it and felt the need to know more, how to find the magical herbs and animals Adela may have discovered on her walks. Yet she could not understand a single word written in it.

She stopped gazing at the dusty pages for a moment. If they discovered the manuscript, they would accuse her of witchcraft. She watched the astrology pictures on one of the pages and decided to keep it secret. This book could mean Adela had been part of the pagan communities that preyed on the convent when the sisters were asleep, the ones that gathered in full-moons around the stone circles and sacrificed their prisoners to Satan.

‘Sister Juliana.’ she heard behind her door. Mother Aethelburg was standing on the threshold of the small room. ‘Do you need assistance?’ She shivered at the sound of the Mother’s voice.

‘No, thank you. I am almost finished.’ answered Juliana. Her heart was beating fast. She hastily folded the book into her habit and turned around.

‘Vespers are about to start. Meet us in the chapel.’ the nun said, leaving Juliana alone.

That night, on the way to her cell, Juliana thought about the significance of the book. The old nun who joked with everyone about the Bishop could not be a pagan. Adela always said the priests came to the convent to check if they had gone wayward: women with too much time in their hands were dangerous to come across. Perhaps Adela had been the most dangerous one of all. Juliana would study the manuscript, and decide if the gold inside its pages was born of sanctity or sin.

There was a powerful force that attracted Juliana to the book. She spent her free hours looking through its pages, and they soon permeated the intricacies of her mind. She could not eat, sleep, or work without the manuscript creeping into her thoughts. Juliana grew progressively tired, and her need to get those magical herbs increased by the day. She used lavender and rose extracts, but the headaches did not go away. It was not enough. The manuscript became her constant companion: she had to decipher the strange writing and find out what the pictures meant: the naked women bathing, the blue and red flowers living in its pages, and the golden tint that burnished them.

Juliana fainted during compline. She was singing a hymn when darkness had enveloped her. She had woken up in her cell, hours later. Juliana hoped no one had seen the book, carefully hidden underneath her mattress. She had dreamt about a voice in her head that spoke to her: The forest. Go to the forest. If there was a place these flowers could be, it was deep in the woods. That was where Adela had spent the majority of her days when she was not in the Scriptum, while Juliana bent in front of a Book of Hours, silver-pointing the small details of the rinceau. She opened the manuscript again, and a metallic smell reached her nostrils: it calmed her.

There was a knock on the door and she covered the volume, scared that someone would take it away from her.

‘How are you feeling?’ inquired Aethelburg, her head appearing on the doorstep.

‘Better, Reverend Mother. I just need to rest.’

‘Sister Algiva will take over the illuminating tomorrow. You cannot stay in bed much longer.’ Aethelburg was carrying a tray with bread and cheese. Juliana perceived the scent of warm red wine with a tinge of something unfamiliar. They took good care of her in the convent, but at that moment she distrusted everyone, especially Mother Aethelburg.

On the tenth day, Juliana decided to escape. She had to find answers, so she left toward the unending sea of trees that surrounded the nunnery. She never ventured past them, her parents had left her in the convent when she was an infant, and Juliana felt no need to discover what awaited in the outside world. She was happy. Yet the voice in her head told her that there was something out there, a magnificent ecosystem of magic that could cure every illness, even death. Juliana could not read the book, but it was clear what it said. The metallic pigments had kept her awake for hours. It was time to go.

There was a hidden map. It was something one would not appreciate at first, but Juliana had spent hours staring at it, and she had figured out the way to reach the magical place: after the golden trail burnished on the manuscript. Juliana often had to stop to catch a breath, her head spinning with every step, her body shivering.

She was still holding the book open when she approached the clearing. Like a paradise lost in the wilderness of the forest, hundreds of flowers drifted with the wind, each one more colorful than the others. Trees with circular shapes flanked the beautiful metallic plants and, making her way to the center of the clearing, Juliana felt at home.

Juliana soon was overwhelmed by her new discoveries. She smelled every pink and blue flower, ate the seeds of purple ones, and put the golden daffodils in her hair, losing her veil. She touched and tasted them until she fell into a deep slumber.

When Juliana woke up from her reverie thinking that someone had been calling her name from the trees, she found herself alone. The young nun had begun feeling ill again, and when she looked down she let out a gasp.

‘Goodness, what did I do?’

Her hands were tinged with gold and green. Her breathing had become irregular, she felt trapped in the clearing that she had thought charming before. Once the sun disappeared, the plants began to glow. The golden light was everywhere, illuminating a trail of purple and lavender mushrooms that led to a small cave she had not noticed before. She glanced at the book: in the page, the same cave lay next to a circular figure. Come to the Golden Kingdom, it whispered.

Juliana stumbled towards it, guided by a strange force. She felt life escaping her, and the only thing that could save her was inside the cave. Ancient stone surrounded the relic’s resting place, up where unworthy humans could not get to. For thousands of years, since the beginning of Time, the sacred place had been kept a secret. Juliana realized the book held the power, and Sister Adela, a hundred years old, must have written it in her own blood. The nun knew the stone was out of her reach: it was too high up. She placed her hands together and prayed.

Juliana met her death just as Adela had: laying down, hands full of poisonous metals and saps, and a terrible pain inside her that ceased when she closed her eyes to never open them again. In the clearing, silence reigned again.