Magnificat

I shall tell this story because the names number of the animals

are as the names and number of the stars,

and so that I, tiny creature, gain access to the great banquet

through God's goodwill, my Father's.

And in telling, I pray the Lord Jesus,

from the pit of the dead's cavern to the top of the kings' chapel,

to translate this Magnificat of mine in letters of fury and fire.

I shall tell what happened in Passion Week of the 960th year from the birth of Christ,

in the lands of the lords of Malfole,

west of the Monks' range and east of the Glossina river,

where people thought the sun would spend the night at the bottom of the sea.

But fear and love of God were deep in them

and the certitude of His presence in the forces of nature,

in springs, in trees, in the clouds of the sky,

in the clearness of clearness.

There was the ancient custom of the last farewell for the dying.

This was pact that the dying would enter with the dearest person,

promising him from Paradise a sign of the peace he reached.

On that morning of Passion Monday Folco,

executioner without a helper,

went and sought one among the members of Nomen's family,

swineherds and cheese makers at Rocchete.

In order to enforce justice,

whenever by chance there should be a need,

let them choose among the sons,

whose sex shall be verified by inspection

and who are unfettered by wife and offspring.

The lord of Sanzena will make 2 executioners every 5 years

during Easter week with the task of enforcing justice

in the lands of Malfole,

below the Limentra river,

Treppio, under the border of the pass of Mount Sambuco

and Mount Acutoragazza,

outside the walls of Camugnano,

and in the villages and fords of Faina

and Tredozio

and in the valley of Mount Horseman.

Without enforcing sentences in the lands of Sassum Glossina,

which belong to the lord of Loggiola.

In case of death

or loss due to supervening impossibility of one of them,

a substitute having the same qualities

of the missing in body and soul

will be sought in the closest lands

and will be made executioner as helper of the first executioner,

who will be at his head till the end of mandate,

when he will ask the lord to return to his origin

and family and house and name.

- What is your name? - Baino.

For the 5 years of his mandate,

the executioner will be marked with the 5 rings of Holy Death,

which he will wear day and night

as a sign of acknowledgment

and immunity.

Under the angels' sky, on the same morning, Roza, royal prostitute,

crossed the arduous paths of Mount Horse,

heading to Visitation Monastery.

After the porters, weighed down with that sacred load,

there were nurses, old wives, and court midwives.

Because Roza, concubine of Hugo King of the Italians,

kept in her womb that monarch's seed,

that holy son that just during Passion Week

was destined to be born.

While in the royal boudoirs two other whores

brooded in their rotten wombs seeds of equal stock.

Hence, in that race to give a boy to the king, the prize was succession.

Roza, who in spite of her age was at the first child,

would not give up the advantage that destiny presented her with.

It's really a boy!

There were many signs that the flesh encumbering her womb was male flesh.

But she, as an expert in enchanting arts,

against the Church's will, wore at her neck the eagle stone,

that with its magnetism protected the infant from the world's spells.

It's there!

They said that Visitation Monastery had been established by Charlemagne himself

and then given in benefit to the order of the Holy Dress.

The pious nuns, beside prayer,

would attend to repairing the walls and the roof,

to weaving blankets,

to tanning leather,

to shearing sheep,

and to growing wheat, barley, and emmer.

Deacons and subdeacons, divided in thurifers,

cross-bearers, candle-bearers, train-bearers, and sextons,

preserved the spirit of the ancient liturgy alive in their rites.

At Vespers they would still recite the prayer to the angels

who appear before God's judgment every day at sundown.

The monastery owed its name to the visit that Mary paid to Elizabeth the day after the Annunciation.

Hanging from the heaven of beams of the church,

the tunic of the Holy Virgin was preserved from immemorial time.

A pilgrim had brought it there from the Holy Land at the time of the first Merovingian kings.

A prodigious relic for women in labor.

It was a royal abbey.

Hence, a special kneeler in the church was named "The King's Place."

End ever, at every hour of the day and of the night,

it was occupied by a nun or by an oblate,

that prayed for the sovereign's soul

to free it from his sins.

If it's his first theft, I have to cut him off an ear

or gouge off one eye.

If they catch him stealing again, I cut him off a foot

or a hand.

If they take him for the third time, I have to hang him.

Is it true that I've taken your son's place?

Who rapes a nun must be burned alive.

Who is married twice must be thrown down a precipice.

He's dead, isn't he?

The executioner thought of his dead son.

Nothing could give him a reason, peace, or truce.

He felt this void within himself

of being as a shell,

the loving skin of a such an immense and incurable wound.

Margherita, seventh daughter of Alardo from the Mount Flower Dell,

through this will read by me

on Monday of Passion Week

in the first year of King Hugh of Provence,

divests herself of all her possessions

and, more precisely,

of a seventh of the house and of the yard,

of a seventh of the road leading to the Glossina-river ford,

of a seventh of the Sperticano forest,

of a seventh of the barge of the ford,

of her grave at the family graveyard,

of a seventh of the two cows,

of the calf, and of the pig.

As an oblate to the holy house of Visitation Monastery,

her lot will be given to the pious abbess, devout to Christ the Lord,

called by the Christian Son of the one God.

In exchange of such gift, the monastery will waive for 10 more years

the fishing and wading rights of the Glossina river.

As per the rule, she will keep for herself only the nun case,

which will hold her body on the day of her death.

This is the head.

And this is the neck.

Here you must come with the blade.

Come, you try!

You broke his skull.

Maybe you didn't even kill him.

Try again!

Here!

Again.

Again.

Again!

Do you know who these are?

All those of the family that are not here any more.

This is you.

As per the pagan usage, the poles with the wooden doves

showed the road back home to those who had died far away.

So in the afternoon of the Holy Monday,

only in her patched dress,

her mother's cape,

and an empty wooden case,

Margherita left Mount Flower Dell

for a trip that for her would last forever.

Beaten by the storm, without consolation,

behold, I rebuild thee over the jasper

and over sapphire I lay thy foundations.

I will make thy battlements of carbuncle,

thy gates will be of precious stones,

and all thy enclosure of gems.

Each of thy sons will be a disciple of the Lord

and thy children will have abundance of peace.

Thou shalt not fear,

sudden fear will fall upon thee no more.

And the Holy Virgin, after receiving the angel's visitation, said one day:

I will rise up and visit my cousin Elizabeth.

I will tell her the great events that have happened to me.

And I will do whatever she tells me.

She put on the vest and she left secretly at daybreak

towards the mountains of Judea.

You may approach.

The Holy Tunic will help you and protect during labor the life you carry in your womb.

The women had prepared the royal couch over long stands.

They provided it with straw bed, mattress, feather pillow, and cushion.

A clear light shone from the walls of the cell,

when they lit candles of Spanish wax.

To fortify the expectant lady, other maids took care of feeding her,

by cooking meats that men experts in the gaming arts had hunted:

cranes and wild geese simmered in mint and fenugreek,

peacocks in pepper sauce,

rabbits in honey-vinegar,

broth of fat meat,

liquor of Cretan grapes,

the inside of the whitest bread to wipe the clots of fat away.

Gromario Grifone, lord of Malfole,

feeling that his death was approaching,

chose to meet him at the foot of the Visitation Monastery,

in the farthest west of his lands.

Hence the men of his court

built a dwelling with the woods of that sacred forest

and blessed it,

as it had been erected on the land where their lord had seen the light

and where his life's companion had been buried,

on the banks of that river

where he had been immersed on that far and bright day

when he had been dubbed a knight.

So on that Tuesday morning of Passion Week

his body tormented with burning pustules

was laid onto a barge bound to float downstream.

His last and noblest escort was formed by his three bastards begotten in the space of his long life: