Free Pillars of Light by Jane Johnson

these times, after the initial panic, was one of intense serenity that enfolded me like angels’ wings. I had no control over these fits, or of the images that accompanied them. How were a churchman and an infidel privy to my visions? I had never spoken of them to anyone.
    The Moor’s brow smoothed as if he had solved some puzzle in his mind. “To make a place where contradictory elements may be reconciled.”
    The bishop sat back with a look of fierce bliss upon his face. “To invite the immanence of the transcendent.”
    “A place where earth touches Heaven.” The Moor looked right at me with a gaze so penetrating that I felt my soul peeled naked. “John, fetch your drawing things.”
    I had been drawing—little caricatures and portraits of the troupe, trees and churches, bits of building—for some weeks, but secretly,fearing ridicule and reprisal. I had hidden my poor efforts from everyone beneath my pallet. But one day, a few weeks ago, I had come upon the Moor with my tattered drawings spread before him on the floor of the dormitory at Bath Abbey while the others were at prayer—or more likely in a tavern.
    “These are good,” he’d told me, a curious expression on his face.
    I tried to gather them up, but he put his hand on my arm. His touch made my heart thunder. I shook him off in another sort of terror, grabbed my drawings and ran away, down the stairs and outside, where I dropped them down the well.
    The next day, like a man attempting to charm a wild animal, he’d found me when I was alone and held a small packet out to me.
    No one had ever given anything to me without expecting something in return.
    “Go on, take it.”
    It was a bit of old oiled cloth. “What have you given me this for?” I was disappointed and angry.
    “Open it!”
    Inside the cloth were leaves of creamy white, bound with fine silk. I touched them with wonder—so soft, so smooth. “What are they?” I had never seen anything so white—it was like being given pieces of the moon.
    “Paper,” he said. “For your drawings. And this, too.”
    Out of his satchel came a small stoppered bottle and a reed cut into the form of a pen. He dipped the reed in the ink and ran a black line down a page, spoiling it. Three more strokes, four, then he turned it to me. It was his face, but it wasn’t. I laughed out loud. The proportions were all wrong.
    I took the pen from him and did what he’d done, but I had only used quills before: I used too much pressure, and made a hole. The next time I left a blot. The third time in a few swift lines I drew his profile: his long, straight nose, cheekbones like carved wood,strong chin. It was not difficult, I had drawn his likeness about a hundred times before.
    He stared at it, astonished, then at me. I held his gaze, trying to be the man I hoped I had become, but then quailed and looked away. We never spoke of this moment after—of either the drawing, or the touch.
    The next day, on a pretty sward of land at the foot of the Mendip Hills some miles to the southwest of Bath, back on the road towards Glastonbury, we pulled up our horses and dismounted, in my case with some relief.
    Bishop Reginald spread his arms wide. “This is Wells, the Place of Many Streams,” he told us, beaming with pride, “where all the holy springs meet and join as one. It is the most beautiful and blessed place in all of England.”
    Between the willow trees, over a gleam of water, I could see some small stone houses, a cluster of ecclesiastical buildings, a jumble of cottages and some barns and pigsties. There was also a great pile of rubble and evidence of what must once have been an ancient church, now no more than ruins, a scurry of men with barrows and picks, and innumerable trenches and holes in the ground. It looked more like a battlefield than a blessed site.
    “Here I shall dedicate to Saint Andrew a wonderful new church, the largest and most beautiful ever built in England.”
    I’d never seen the bishop so