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The Name of the Roswell
An "X-Files" Story by LoneGunGuy
P R I M E
some monks in black, and Reynard makes
some striking observations.
It was a beautiful morning in the middle of October. We had been riding for some weeks, our destination to the north, and had finally reached the foot of the hill on which the great abbey stood. I was traveling in the company of a learned Franciscan, Brother Reynard of Roswell, serving as his scribe and disciple, placed in this capacity by the mandate of none less than Pope John XXII himself. Trained in medicine and the theological sciences, I had been instructed to observe Brother Reynard and record his work, although my duties soon far transcended this function; I pray that God will grant me the power to be the transparent witness of all that took place while I was in his company, and that my hand may remain steady as I prepare to recount what happened.
Brother Reynard's appearance was at that time such as to attract the attention of the most inattentive observer. I did not consider him handsome, but silly maids would sometimes swoon over him in the marketplace and giggle behind their hands as he passed: ut castis auribus vox amoris suspecta sit, et invisa, he paid them no attention, but it struck me as remarkable even then. His nose was very large, and bulbous, and his countenance could sometimes be blank and expressionless, almost as if his entire face had been made of wood: but he was nigris vegetisque oculis micantibus, of a dark and sparkling eye, and could express humor or excitement with the twitch of an eyebrow. For most of that morning, however, he had remained in silent introspection, except to comment occasionally upon some notable feature of the atmosphere.
As we ascended the hillside on our little mules, admiring the beauty of the landscape, our contemplation was interrupted by the arrival of a band of monks and servants, their habits -- which were completely black -- soiled by the dust of a rough journey. Their somber garments marked them as Benedictines, but their eyes were veiled from us by strange goggles of bone, with only a thin slit to peer through, as if to protect their vision from some solarium radiorum refractionem of which only they were aware.
After a brief conference with his companions, one of them approached and greeted us with great apparent cordiality. "Welcome to our abbey, sir," he said, "and do not be surprised if I can guess who you are, for I was advised of your visit several days ago. I am Pendrell of Varagine, the cellarer of the monastery. And if you, as I believe, are Brother Reynard of Roswell, the abbot must be immediately informed of your arrival."
"I thank you, Brother Cellarer," my master replied politely, "and I respect your courtesy even in the midst of such confusion. Unfortunately, I fear that you may have cause to worry. The cattle you seek have been taken to the lowermost portion of the mountain, where they now lie comfortably in the coolest part of the dungheap with their eyes and vital organs removed, eaque praecipua et grandiora tantum, of course."
"You have seen them, then?" the cellarer asked.
"Why, we haven't seen anything, have we, Dana?" Reynard said, turning to me with a look of amusement on his face. "But if you are seeking the cattle that disappeared from the abbey last night, they can only be in the place that I have described."
The cellarer hesitated. "Last night? How did you know?"
"Come, come," Reynard said. "It is obvious that you are searching for five head of cattle, the finest in your abbot's stables, good milkers, broad about the shoulders and back, that became agitated two hours before sundown last night, disappearing from their customary feeding pens after a bright light was glimpsed in the sky above the abbey, a brightness in the shape of the saucer that contains the Eucharist, that is, some inordinatum coeli dispositionem: quod incredibile videtur, but it is what happened, is it not?"
The cellarer hesitated a moment longer, then motioned for the other men to follow him. As he and his companions rushed off along the path to our right, toward the dungheap, one of the other monks approached us, an old man bent under the weight of years. Throughout the conversation, he had lingered at the rear of the group, chewing thoughtfully on some odiferous herb; now, however, he spoke to Reynard in a soft, careful tone.
"Good Brother Franciscan," he said. "Many odd things have happened, have they not? Difficile est nodum hunc expedire, eo quod nondum omnia quae huc pertinent explorata habemus. I would advise you to remain silent of what you have seen today." With that ominous message, he left, and our mules resumed their climb soon afterward.
After a noble battle to restrain my curiosity, I could not stop myself. "And now tell me -- how did you manage to know?"
"My good Dana," Reynard said, after a pause of some moments, "I am almost ashamed to explain what should be obvious to anyone. Before the crossroads, in the field beneath the shadow of the Aedificium, we both observed a large circle of crushed grass that measured perhaps thirty paces in diameter. You commented upon it yourself, and wondered what might have been its cause -- even though, at Melk, you must have read the third book of Olaus Magnus, who speaks of saltum adeo profunde in terras imprimunt, ut locus insigni deinceps virore orbicularis sit, et gramen non pereat..."
"Devils!" I cried.
"Not at all," my master replied. "Admittedly, I do not pretend to know the cause of this mysterious circle, no more than Noah understood the cause of his rainbow, save that both were authored by unknown hands. But I do know from my reading and observation that such circles are almost always heralded by strange specula in the heavens -- something which you might have anticipated, Dana, had you listened more attentively in the village where we paused this morning for Mass. In the churchyard and common square, the women were speaking of nothing but the ominous lights they had seen in the sky the night before."
"It is not my business to concern myself with the talk of silly women," I said with some coldness.
"The talk of silly women is more instructive than one might sometimes suspect. What was the tale of Mary Magdalene on the morning of the Resurrection of our Savior, after all, but the idle gossip of a chattering girl?"
"All right," I said, "but the cattle, the vital organs...?"
"May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind! Did you not observe the great number of vultures circling the area above the dungheap, so numerous that coelum subito obumbrabant, they darkened the sky with their numbers? Only the carcasses of several large ruminants could produce such a spectacle. The bodies must have been deposited there recently, for these birds will strip a cadaver to the bones in an hour or two and lose interest soon afterward; I identified their carrion as cows, not horses, from the color of the blood on their beaks. I guessed that there were five cows because the cellarer had brought five companions, so as not to soil his hands; and he would not have been so concerned if the beasts had been scrawny of flesh or poor milkers, or if the circumstances of their disappearance had been anything less than astounding. Finally, I knew one thing from my previous knowledge of the subject, that cattle taken by mysterious objects supra humanam cogitationem will often be found the next day with their eyes, ears and vital organs removed by forces unknown. In this, I hope to be proven right."
"But the vultures will have destroyed the carcasses long before the cellarer arrives!" I protested. "There will be no way of showing that you were correct!"
"And also no way of proving that I was wrong. But I expect that the events of the day will make these events more transparent: in practice, such saucer-shaped lights do not confine themselves to taking men's cattle alone, but will soon begin to take men as well, and do similar things to their bodies..."
At this, I said mockingly, "I suppose you think that these specula come from worlds other than our own, where cattle are butchered in the firmament, and their entrails are scattered among the fixed stars." For Reynard had spoken of such perplexing ideas before, much to my amusement, and I was no more inclined to believe him now.
"My dear Dana, do not be too skeptical. The Prophets themselves speak of such terrible and inscrutable meteors in infinito aethere, as the fiery chariot that gathered Elijah into the bosom of the Empyrean, or the wheels within wheels which Ezekiel describes in the prologue to his holy book, so that one with a pious heart would be hard-pressed to deny the existence of such palantia sidera. Roger Bacon and other men of my islands have further chronicled these things, ad stuporem astronomorum, cum multis aliis in coelo miraculis. So keep an open mind and heart."
"But I cannot accept such ideas!" I cried. "Have you not spoken to me many times against the unnecessary multiplication of causes? You would invoke the entire universe in the explication of a few stolen cattle!"
"That may be true," Reynard granted. "But if nam quodcunque vides Deus est, as is professed by the doctors of the Church, God is everywhere, and sperabundus exspecto innumerabilium mundorum in aeternitate perambulationem, why may we not suppose that these infinite worlds are inhabited by creatures like us? Job, who to our sublunary minds may be rightly considered a nuncius sidereus, affirms that the Almighty shaketh the earth from its place, Qui commovet terram de loco suo, thus implying the motion of the terrestrial sphere. If the earth moves, it is a planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she does, as many prove, and then, per consequens, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon."
"You mean to drive me insane with these speculations!" I said. "If there are creatures on other worlds, what are we to think of the condition of their souls? Are they to be saved or not? And how is it that all things were made for man, if there are creatures like men on the moon and other planets?"
"These are admirable questions, my dear Dana. I do not know. I only trust that aliquis veritas est, the truth is out there, and it is the office of our faith and reason to determine where it lies. But hush -- if I am correct, we should soon be approaching the gate of the abbey."
And it is here that, for reasons of time and brevity, I must bring my manuscript to a close. I may, in time, continue my account of the seven days that I spent at the abbey in Reynard's company, during which we witnessed many strange and wonderful things: but for now, it is cold in the scriptorium, my thumb aches. I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer trust anyone: noli cuique confidere, noli cuique confidere.