It was thus, bent double like cripples at Bitola fair, that they reached the monastery of Sveti Pantelimon. Roses grew by it, otherwise it was a grim place, a tiny church built into the rock on a widening ledge of the rock, with a dwelling hut attached. The modest brick cupola of the church was almost scraped by fingers of rock stabbing from the cliff-face.
The intruders were seen. Only four brothers lived here; three of them hurried out to meet their royal guest, whom they recognised. But it was the fourth the king required to see, and after taking slatko, the traditional dish of Serbian hospitality, he asked to see this priest.
Jovann rose. ‘My lord king, I fear for your safety even here, since we know not that even now the foul-stomached muslim may be riding along this very canyon. I am a soldier. I will guard outside, and give you warning if they come – in a place like this, we might hold off an army.’
‘Guard well, my general,’ said the king, and was prompted to give Jovann his hand.
The holy man he wished to see sat in the bare adjoining room. He seemed, with his wrinkled visage, to represent antiquity rather than old age; but his most notable feature was his left eye which, unlike its brown neighbour, was entirely and featurelessly white. To the king, it appeared that this priest, by name Milos, often saw best with his white eye.
When their courtesies were concluded, the king said, ‘I am here to ask you only one question, and I need from you only one answer.’
‘Often, my lord king Vukasan, there is more than one answer to a question. Question and answer are not simple and complete opposites, as are black and white.’
‘Do not tease me, for I am weary, and the freedom of my kingdom is at stake.’
‘You know I will do what I can.’
‘I believe you are among the wisest men in my lands, and that is why I come to you now. Here is the question. Only a few years ago, in the reign of my father and grandfather, whom we all recall and bless, this our kingdom was expanding, and with it the life of our peoples. Life and knowledge and art and worship were gaining strength every day. Now we see all that we hoped for threatened with ruin, as the red-tipped muslim bites into our lands. So I ask you what will the future be, and how can we influence it for good?’
‘That sounds, my lord king, like two questions, both large; but I will reply to you straightly.’ Milos opened the palm of his hand and stared at it with his white eye. ‘There are as many futures as there are paths in your kingdom, my lord; but just as some paths, if followed to their end, will take you to the west and others if followed to their end will take you to the east, so there are futures which represent the two extremes of what may be – the best and the worst, we might say. I can, if you will, show you the best and the worst.’
‘Tell me what you can.’
The priest Milos rose and stared out of his small window, which afforded a view onto the gloomy rock beyond. With his back to the king, he said, ‘First, I will tell you what I see of the good future.
‘I see you only a year from now. You lead a great army to a beleaguered city set under an isolated mountain, as it might be Prilep. There you smite the sacrilegious Turk, and scatter the entrails of his soldiery far over the blossoming plain, so that he does not come again to our Serbian lands. For this great victory, many petty princes turn to your side and swear allegiance to you. The Byzants, being corrupt, offer you their crown. You accept, and rule their domain even as your father hoped you might.’
He turned to look at the king, but the king sat there at the bare table with his head bowed, as if indifferent to the burning tidings the priest bore. The latter, nodding, turned back to contemplate the rock and continued in an even tone as previously.
‘You rule wisely, if without fire, and make a sensible dynastic marriage, securing the succession of the house of Nemanija. The arts and religion flourish as never before in the new kingdom. Many homes of piety and learning and law are established. Now the Slavs come into their inheritance, and go forth to spread their culture to other nations. Long after you are dead, my king, people speak your name with love, even as we speak of your grandfather, Orusan. But the greatness of the nation you founded is beyond your imagining. It spreads right across Europe and the lands of the Russian. Our gentleness and our culture go with it. There are lands across the sea as yet undiscovered; but the day will come when our emissaries will sail there. And the great inventions of the world yet to come will spring from the seed of our Serbian knowledge, and the mind of all mankind be tempered by our civility. It will be a contemplative world, as we are contemplative, and the love in it will be nourished by that contemplation, until it becomes stronger than wickedness.’
He ceased, and the king spoke, though his eyes were fixed on the bare floor. ‘It is a grand vision you have, priest. And … the other, the ill future?’
Milos stared but with his white eye at the rock and said, ‘In the ill future, I see you leading no grand army. I see a series of small battles, with the shrieking Turk winning almost all of them by superior numbers and science. I see you, my lord king, fall face forward down into the Serbian dust, never to rise again. And I see eventually Serbia herself falling, and the other nations that are our neighbours and rivals, all falling to the braying enemy, until he stands hammering at the gates even of Vienna in the European north. So, my lord, I see nigh on six centuries in which our culture is trampled underfoot by the conqueror.’
Silence came into the chilly room, until the king said heavily, ‘And the other lands you spoke of, and overseas, how are they in this ill future?
‘Perhaps you can imagine, my lord. For those six centuries, lost is the name of Serbia, and the places we know and love are regarded simply as the domain of the ginger-whiskered Turk. Europe grows into a fierce and strifeful nest of warring nations – art they have, but little comtemplation, power but little gentleness. They never know what they lack, naturally. And when Serbia finally manages to free itself from its hated bondage, the centuries have changed it until your name is lost, and the very title King no longer reverenced. And though she may grow to be a modest power in the world, the time when she might have touched the hearts of all men with her essence is long faded, even as are last year’s poppies.’
After he had heard Milos out, the king rose to his feet, though his body trembled. ‘You give me two futures, priest, and even as you said, they differ as does a speckled trout from a bird. Now answer my question and say which of them is to be the real future, and how I can realise the good vision of which you spoke first.’
The priest turned to face him. ‘It is not in my power to tell you which future will happen. No man can do that. All I can do is give you an omen, hoping that you will then take power into your own hands. Seers see, rulers rule.’
‘Give me then an omen!’
‘Think for yourself where the futures divide in the prospects I laid before you.’
He groaned and said, ‘Ah, I know full well where they divide. We do not bring enough men against the devilish muslim at one time. We are as you say a contemplative people, and the floods must lap our doorstep before we take in the rug at the portal.’
‘Suppose it were not a question of being warlike but of being … well, too contemplative.’
‘Then Jovann and I must rouse the whole nation to fight. This I will do, priest, this is what I was hastening to Sveti Andrej to do.’
‘But you called here. Was not that a delay?’
‘Priest, I came bleeding from the battle at the River Babuna with all haste.’
‘Ah?’
He put a weary hand to his forehead and stared at the bare wall. He recalled the long hours of