The legend of Saint Inés of Moncada / I went into the wilderness

(Translated roughly from HERE)

Originary of Bilbao, The Alpicats (generously compromised with the cause of the king Jaime I) established themselves in Moncada at the end of the conquest of Valencia. They had an old lineage, prestige, lands and riches, but, halfway through the XIV century, the lack of a male succesor made Na Ángela de Alpicat the absolute inheritor of his parents title and wealth. The farmhouse was big, as her solitude; and the holding too big for her to administer without the help of a man accostumed to deals and businesses of such magnitude. On top of that, the house's blazons claimed for a successor. The orphan needed a husband proper to her caste that lent her tenderness, shelter and the chance to bear a son. And as En Guillermo Pedrós, also a noble, met such conditions, she married him; setting their residence in the stately mansion on the Main Street where she lived.

Fruit of that matrimony, the 25th of june of 1338, a little girl came into this world to whom they called Inés; the only possible inheritor again, as Na Ángela, after the difficult childbirth, became sterile. Their parents received however with enormous enthusiasm and expected her to govern at her time their patrimony after them.

Inés grew fair and healthy, showing notable mystic inclinations since childhood. She was cheerful and sweet, an angel for the servants and the townsfolk foreign to the family; obedient and solicitous with her parents. She shared her mother's duties and devotions, the walks of En Guillermo, who taught her to appreciate nature, countryside knowledge, the names of trees, plants and seeds.

A little after turning five years old, on Christmas day, Inés went with her mother to the temple. It was tradition then, in that day, to celebrate three masses. The first one, called missa d'alba (mass of dawn) was at six in the morning, and the last one at ten. Despite the early waking and the outside temperature (icy and humid) the moncadian parishioners didn't stop attending the solemn event. The girl, behaved but a little stiff with cold, occupied a cot beside a bench of the presbytery, from which Na Ángela de Alpicat followed the liturgy with remarkable absorption, imitated by Inés until, suddently, something unusual upset her in the moment of the Consagration

"mama"

"hush"

"mama, mama!" Insisted the kid, hugging her, with the eyes set on the Sacred Form that Mosén Jaime (a title given to clerics at that time and age) held over his head

"what got you, daughter?"

"Look at the boy child mama"

"What child?"

"The priest's child"

"Hush now! we can't talk at the church"

The rebuke didn't help that the same scene happened again in the two following masses, exactly when the priest raised the bread. Finally, moved by Inés' tantrum (Inés didn't use to lie, and her mother was afraid that her child could be under some spell) Na Ángela decided to communicate this happening to the priest. Mosén Jaime, with crooked eyebrows, decided to put Inés to test so the doubts were dispelled. "Satan doesn't rest nor does he make distinctions on age" he thought. On december 28th, in quality of witnesses, thirty persons were convoked: The Pedrós-Alpicat, the vicar mosén Berenguer Mestre, the sacristan and some town personalities who, in camera, heard the mass; waiting for the smallest reaction from Inés.

At the moment of the Consagration, the priest turned towards the little girl, holding the Sacred Form in her right hand, and a similar but unblessed one on the left.

"What do you see, Inés?"

"I see a fair child to to your right"

Mosén Jaime, impassive, turned on his back to exchange the breads, before formulating the same question:

"What do you see, Inés?"

"The same child to your left", she said, as determined as the previous time. The third time, the priest tried to make it more difficult. He had split the Sacred Form in half, and show her both pieces, one in each hand.

"Tell me, Inés, do you still see the child?"

"There are two of them now, father!", she answered amazed, seized with joy.

"She is a little saint! she is a little saint!", was the general clamor. And after the liturgy was concluded, everyone attested in a written document that extraordinary happening; an eucharistical miracle, in their understanding.

With time, her natural mysticism, added to the stigma of an early santification and the effects that a speech of Saint Vicente Ferrer in the temple of Santa Tecla at Valencia (1406) stimulated a profound religious vocation in her, contrary to her parents' aspirations: marry her to a rich farmer and thus secure their family lineage.

The pressure of his father was stronger: he was a practical man, who didn't even want to hear his wife's reasonings. She was more willing to grant her daughter's wishes to join a convent; but the families of the suitors were already arranging dates for the matrimony.

One evening, when her parents were at the city, Inés shed her jewels and hairpins and cut her hair. Then she took a male garb from her servants' room and abandoned the house with extreme stealth. She knew where she was going, as the place had seduced her when she visited it as a kid: The Cartuja of Porta-Coeli, surrounded by high peaks, embraced by thick pine groves.

She took three days to get to the monastery: as her looks were convincing, the friars, believing she was a helpless boy, received her swiftly. But once inside, after the first night, she gave herself away and asked for confession.

 "Oh, my daughter" Can't you see the mess of this situation? You can't live among us. The sacrament of penitence forgives you from your sins but compels me to silence. You can't stay, unless... unlesss you live on a nearby cave and you take care of our sheep. Then, we will see"

"Do not worry, father, as I will find my way to earn my keep with as much zeal as I long for giving my life to the Lord"

From that accord, Inés was the benjamin of La Cartuja for four years. The pious shepard who, in addition of taking care of the flock, prayed on the quiet, subjecting her body to very harsh penitences reserved for the redemption of lost souls. The curate, seeing she was pale and haggard, tried to admonish her in vain.

"Dear child, you pray more than the friars. Are the rigors of Lent, daily mass and mandatory Sunday prayers not enough for you?"

And that was not little. According to the statutes of the Monastery, the donated brothers and converts did not attend the services of the Community, but on Sundays they were subject to chanting: for the four lesser hours, forty Our Fathers; for vespers, twenty-two; for matins and lauds, eighty-two; and for the deceased, nine. In addition to the so-called monasticism or death of a member of the Order, which included the prayer of three hundred and seventy.

"Father, you forget I didn't came here to serve the house, but God. I want to be a hermit, wear the cartujan habits and I reclaim your blessing to retire into a cave I discovered high in the mountain"

That abrupt cavern would be her last home of the noble Inés, whose weapons, from then onwards, were the sackcloth and praying.

The night of June's 25th of 1428, a strange shining illuminated the mountain crest. It wasn't a fire, because there was not fire or smoke on sight. The monks, pressured by the scared townsfolk who attributed it to a supernatural phenomenon, ascended to the almost inaccesible refuge of Inés. They told that, already near the place, a fresh but indefinite perfume, more fragant than the pines, thyme and myrtus, enveloped them. Soon after, at the foot of a crude cross, they found the fallen body of the virgin from Moncada, shedding a nymbus of blinding light. Her confessor, then, with broken voice, revealed the secret of the false shepard, and, in that instant, the bells of la Cartuja, rung by invisible hands, was heard in all the Lullén Valley. So lingering and intense was that, on the next morning, when they gave a christian burial to the body under the altar of the primitive gothic chapel of the monastery, the bell went deaf, broken in a thousand pieces.

The cave of Santa Inés is still today a centre of popular peregrination. Through the centuries, the memory of the young girl persist despite the house with the coat of arms of the Alpicat's (A red wing over a golden field, and a group of golden stones over an azure field) was demolished. 

 

 

(actual view of the monastery in our days, founded by a 9th level cleric a little before the story above)

 

Last sunday, I went with one of my players on a trip. We wanted to go to sleep in a cave in the woods, the cave mentioned in that story above. He had been there before, but not me. 

It was a 20 kilometers trip from our homes (two six-mile hexes) and we wanted to do it by walking all the way. We were all the time referencing travel rules and extrapolating to our game, waiting for the roll of 1 that would trigger the wandering encounter check.

We started our trip at 3 in the afternoon, after taking a tea. Hung on our backpacks were the bedroll and the sack; my shirt off and rolled in my head to prevent insolations, and we started to walk. He was the guide, being naturally good at it and checking the google maps when there were doubts. The first hex was more civilised, crossing towns, industrial zones, orchards, fields and roads. The last civilized spot we reached it by half past six. We took a coffee before venturing further into the forest.

The second hex was a road with a military area, and then forest on both sides. The moon had not risen when the night came, but the stars illuminated the pathway enough for us to walk, but probably hiding from ourselves any curious fauna that could be watching us (beyond a couple of what seemed to be falcons or eagles). We didn't carry any weapons beyond a small pocket knife, but there aren't any bears or wolves in our part of Spain, neither the owlbears we were joking about. My friend has seen roe deers and boars there, however. We kept walking into a dark valley, until we met the monastery. The size of it was impressive, even if I could only see it from a distance. I passed under its aqueduct and it was like sizing up a dragon by watching only his enormous foot.

The road became an unpaved path after that, and soon we had to abandon it into a forest track that went up into the mountain. I ended up exhausted after some time, and I had to actually take a seat in a rock with my heart pounding fast in the middle of the night, as my (more accostumed to aerobic training) friend told me "don't worry, the cave its only fifty meters away"

It might seem strange but neither my friend nor me are very used to take photographs, so I can't show you the cave (and it was very dark by then, anyways) but it was much more pretty than I had imagined. It has a wide but short entrance (you must crouch to enter) but inside it's height grows a little and it feels like a wide and clear, really confy room of like 2x3 meters, only occupied by a little commemorative tile and a rock bend turned into a small shrine, where other pilgrims have left some offerings.

Soon we scratched off our rations (chorizo, meatballs, almonds and apples) and some water. I was actually worried because we had very little water by then, and we were fucking far from any known source of it. We had to wait until the third travel turn of the day (the sleeping turn) to met our wandering monster. We had not made any guards. The cave felt as clean as to not fear any vermin such as scorpions or snakes (maybe a delusional feeling, maybe the powers of Saint Inés, but the cave "felt" clean) After some time silent and waiting for sleep, broken only by the midnight monastery bells sounding on the distance and the occasional roe deer barking somewhere below, I heard our bags running fast as a motorbike through the cave's door.

My friend though it was me, and when I told him I had seen something big at the entrance of the cave (something that had passed the surprise check) he thought I was fooling him. I went outside with my cellphone's light just to found this precious, big, yellow fox (I didn't knew there were yellow ones) eating our chorizos from the bag. He physically fought with my friend who tried to recover them, biting him on the leg (luckily he rolled 1 for damage) and achieved to run away with 2 of the 4 chorizos (one ration). He wasn't happy with that alone, so he came in five times more that night, trying to eat my bedroll, my shoes, my finger and depriving us from a proper rest (the game master would not allow us to gain hp that night) but for us it was like magical. We haven't stopped talking about the fox in three days. This is the best video I achieved to do, inside the cave, illuminated only by the other cellphone's lantern: