In honor of the I Heart SapphFiction website featuring my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery (Adelaide Books) in the nonbinary category of the reading challenge, I am posting this section which has never been published before, which is written from the point of view from the monk living in the abbey in the 1500s. First, I have included the information from the back of the book, to provide context.
You can view the post below on You Tube or read it below.
“In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we meet a unicorn who tells us the story of the seven tapestries, called “The Hunt of the Unicorn” from the 1500s on display in “the unicorn room” in The Cloister in Manhattan, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestries tell the story of what is still called an “unsolved mystery.” The story is set in an abbey in France not far from the barn in the countryside where the tapestries were discovered. Pursued by a band of hunters, the unicorn is led along by observing birds, smelling and eating the abbey flowers and fruits (including imbibing in fermented pomegranates), pursuing chaste maidens (there is one in the tapestry) and at times speaks to other animals such as the majestic stag.
A magical, medieval world through the eyes of a unicorn and the heretical young monk who is enthralled by her is in The Unicorn, The Mystery by Janet Mason. Hunters are out to capture and perhaps kill the unicorn. The monk’s devotion may turn out to be the unicorn’s rescue or downfall. Like a beautiful tapestry, the novel weaves together theological debate and unforgettable characters, including queer nuns and their secret cat companion. Mason blends myth and history to conjure up a spellbinding vision.” – Kittredge Cherry, Publisher, Qspirit.net, Author of “Jesus in Love: A Novel”
“In her latest novel, The Unicorn, the Mystery, Janet Mason weaves a fascinating tale told from the alternating perspectives of a unicorn and a monk. With the gorgeous and magical Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters in New York as a conduit, Janet Mason unfolds her story with lyricism, poetry, philosophy, and a profound spiritual consciousness.” – Maria Fama, Poet and Educator, author of The Good for the Good, Other Nations: an animal journal, and other books.
“The Unicorn, The Mystery has all the big ideas — passion, redemption, guilt, loneliness, empathy, pride, destiny, humility, lust, and love — told in simple, down-to-earth language. The unicorn’s story will resonate with me for a long time.” – Louis Greenstein, author, The Song of Life
(Chapter Eighteen)
‘“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’”
I studied the Greek words in the Bible that I had placed on the olden wooden desk before me — lingering over the word logos. The page was old and brittle so I traced my index finger in the air over the long lines of the lambda, the circle of the omicron, the crevice of the gamma, the roundness of the second omicron and the plural sigma at the end that looked like a curved snake with its head below the bottom line.
There was a long narrow gold and blue “J” travelling the length of the page on the left-hand side of the page. It looked like a spear but on closer inspection, I could see that it was an elongated and elaborate letter. This was the first page of the Gospel of John in The New Testament.
I felt my eyes widen as I thought about the fact that I just happened to flip open to this page. I had long had a love of language, reading and writing. The Bible fell open to the perfect page for me. I took it as a sign. This was a special Bible. It was in Greek rather than the Latin Bibles that the priests used in the abbey. This Bible looked old and valuable.
I had found it in the back of the shelf hidden away behind the more modern books. I wondered who had stashed it there and why.
The word for God —Theos —was there too. It was one of the first Greek words that I had memorized. I located the first Theos and traced my finger in the air over the capitalized theta that was narrow and elongated, a large “O” with a horizontal line through it; followed by a small epsilon like the Latin “e” but curved; the omicron, and the plural sigma. As important as this word was, it felt secondary.
Logos seemed to be the most important word. From listening to the Priest, I knew the “Word” was supposed to be Jesus. God sent his only son, Jesus, to earth to spread his teachings. So, the story went. But “word” was the subject of the first clause – so even grammatically it was the main event. The sentence mentioned God — but it did not mention his son, Jesus. That was something the Priest said. Everybody was just supposed to accept it. Why did the Priest have so much power? Why did I want that power?
‘“In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’”
Because of the long illuminated initial, I almost thought that the book was a psaltery. But I didn’t think a book of the psalms would also house the canonical gospels.
The book looked elaborate enough to have been used in a coronation. Who had used it?
What had they used it for?
The passage didn’t make me think of Jesus. It seemed to be saying that the written word was sacred – maybe especially that the Greek word was sacred. It was, after all, the most ancient language that I understood — although there must have been others that came before. I shuddered, wondering what secrets the ancient languages would unlock.
For as far back as I could remember, I have always loved stories. I loved the worlds they created, and I loved that those worlds lived in my head. (I also loved my mother’s soft voice, the brush of her lips on my forehead at bedtime before I fell asleep.) When I learned to read and write, I was amazed to see the letters that I wrote forming sounds and then words.
To me, the word was always sacred. The word was how ideas were expressed. The word represented thought. It was the word that drove me to see the world more brightly. The word could change hearts and minds. The word was everything.
I imagined how scholars deciphered languages. Maybe they found the languages that went before the languages they were studying. Perhaps they looked for similar characters and patterns of word endings. Perhaps they discovered how the language flowed by looking at the white space — or the empty beige clay of the tablets at the end of the line. Maybe there was an ancient stone hidden somewhere — that would tell them, for instance, the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Maybe someday they would find this key.
Maybe they would tell of sacred creatures who were rarely seen by humans. Maybe these creatures had their own language.
I looked around the library guiltily. If there was anyone there, they might be able to read my heretical thoughts.
I was still thinking of Thomas after seeing him walk down the hall from my teacher’s office yesterday.
I doubted that I would see him — or for that matter Gregory — in the library. Gregory would just have been here last time because he was looking for a secluded place to express his sorrow. And Thomas — if he was romantically involved with Father Matthew — would have no need to come to the library.
They were young men who loved themselves more than musty old books. They certainly didn’t love their sad and weary teacher even if they pretended that they did.
I guessed that most people loved themselves first.
I had myself to look at. I had loved my beloved unicorn — and I betrayed her for my own gain.
I had even come to the library for myself.
When I was learning ancient Greek, I always felt reassured. The language made me think of my mother and the stories she used to tell me.
She didn’t speak Greek, of course. She always spoke in her peasant French. But she told me many of the Greek myths and legends that she had learned from her father. One of my favorite stories was about Jason and the Argonauts searching for their fabled Golden Fleece.
I would close my eyes at bedtime when my mother told me the story of Jason. He learned that to return to his native land and become King, he must first bring back the fleece of the Golden Ram which was located on a far-away island. With the help of the god and goddesses, especially his special goddess, Hera, he chose his crew. They assembled a wooden boat and embarked on the first long-distance ocean voyage. The fleece hung on a tree on the island of Colchis, then on the edge of the known world. The fleece was hung by the son of Helios, the sun god, in a sacred grove, and it was guarded by bulls and a magical dragon who never slept.
To get to the island, the ship — steered by Jason — and rowed by his Argonauts, his crew of sailors, the men had to forge unknown territories of the sea which in included treacherous islands.
Every night, my mother would tell me of their harrowing adventures, that included visiting an island with towering, life-threatening giants. At the very end of the story, before Jason and the Argonauts reached their destination, they had to pass through the clashing rocks that guarded the entrance to the Black Sea. I do not remember the ending — only that Jason did reach his destination and found the Golden Fleece. I imagined that when they were traveling the sea at night they looked up and guided themselves with the constellation of Aries which is Latin for Ram.
My mother did not turn the pages of the book and read to me because there was no book. She didn’t know how to read because it was forbidden for women to be educated. So, she just told me the story from her memory – of how it was told to her.
Many years later when I entered the monastery, the Priest told me that the Golden Fleece represented many things, chief among them the forgiveness of God. He then went on to tell me, with great authority, that “the heroic character of Jason was a re-invention of Jesus.” When I innocently asked how Jason could be a reinvention of Jesus, when the tale of Jason and the Argonauts was written so long ago, the Priest just gave me a blank look.
I gazed at a ray of sun filtering down from a high window in the dusty library and wondered briefly if there was any connection between the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail. Both were brilliant and gleaming like the sunlight.
I looked down at the Greek New Testament still open on the desk before me. I didn’t know enough Greek to understand all the words on the page — but I did know the Greek word for light: phos. Again, and again, my eyes came back to it. I knew what the lines said because I had studied the Bible in Latin. The lines in the Gospel of John had caught my eye: “‘The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe; He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light; That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’”
I studied the lines of the opening Greek character Phi. It looked like an upside-down pitchfork with curved prongs. This was followed by a lowercase omega — pronounced like the Latin O — and ended in the plural sigma which was a Latin c sitting on the line and lowering to the left in a curving subscript. I said the word softly under my breath: phos.
The word made me think of the brightest light I had ever seen when I was a young monk and had glimpsed my beloved unicorn in the clearing. It seemed like the sun was blazing into the unicorn’s magical horn and her white body. The light behind her was magnified by the stands of white birch trees.
Perhaps we are all creatures of the light.
Like Jason and like the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table — who searched for the Holy Grail — I felt that I, too, had something bright and gleaming in my future.
The Unicorn, The Mystery is available online wherever books are sold, through your local bookstore, and through your local library (just ask the librarian to order the book if they don’t have it).
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
Janet Mason, author 