The Hancel Spire is what they’ll call it, that fat and ugly monster they’ll build in Frankfurt. The old cathedral in Frankfurt, filled with tinder and dry rushes, had risen as a pyre to God, great flames reaching to the sky. It smouldered for weeks, choking the whole town. A curse from the devil they called it, the whittling darkness of Old Nick. When the ashes had finally been swept into the river, the town needed healing, needed a cure for the blight. The call went up for a new cathedral, with a great spire with which all who saw it would be humbled. Many came to try to answer the call, with their plans and designs, and none seemed to rise above the memory of the fire, until Hancel rode into town, a tired old monk, with a shaken face, and blinded eyes.

Hancel had been visited by visions. He stood in the street outside the burnt grave of the old cathedral, rocking back and forth, murmuring to himself for days, so that all the local invalids gathered around him to seek healing. And there he stayed swaying back and forth, until on the fourth day, it’s said he grew still, solid as a rock, and marched to the town hall, threw open the doors, calling out, ordering in the name of God, a spire, a true spire for the new cathedral. The Bishop would have thrown him out there and then, but he carried with him plans, crazed drawings, flecks of a vision, a powerful vision of holiness, twisting up to the heavens, carrying the souls of the lost to a higher place. Its beauty dazed all who saw it, for within the maze of designs lay the plans for The Lord’s True Spire, a place where God himself resides.

Initial plans were drawn, but it quickly became clear that even Hancel did not know how the designs were meant to fit together. The city’s tradesmen drew strained depictions of what should go where, trying to mould the vision into workable plans, but to fill the vast range of the vision, they drew a spire, great and tall, out of all proportion, a heavy-set thing, a monster. Even they knew it was ugly, a twisted distortion of the lofted heights they could barely glimpse in Hancel’s vision. It was, though, not impossible – something they insisted the original designs were. The work was started, heavy rocks moved in, and as far as I know, the work progresses to this day. Frankfurt will have its new cathedral, massive spire intact. But as the initial stonework was laid, Hancel frothed and swayed, dallying contortions spinning him. In the street, he called, he wailed. The spire was not enough, not for God to hear. The Bishop had heard enough, had been ridiculed for too long, resigned as he was to an ugly cathedral; in the night Hancel disappeared. Rumour spoke of a body drowned in the river, and his drawings were burned, vision and all.

Now, I may not know much about God, about the fates – my feet are too strongly held on the Earth – but something I do know is spires. I apprenticed with John Stratton on Edmunton’s Church, a beautiful corniced low-arched peaker. Nothing grand, but nicely pretty, and good and solid. Stratton taught me a thing or two about spires, but he never really felt them rise in his bones. It was from him I first heard of Hancel’s Spire, the grotesque tower of Frankfurt. He used it in his lectures to me, an example of what happens when people move away from the basic tenants of the spire’s construction. A spire overburdened with “vision”, so that it no longer rises high and proud. Stratton was a big name in England, he made spires that lasted, he’d stick them up so they wouldn’t fall down, but somehow they didn’t call out to the heavens like they should. All I could think, as he extolled the story to me, was the terrible loss. The wasted chance to build more than just a spire, to reach upwards and outwards. To call to God. They had taken the beautiful designs, and turned them into a monster. It was something Stratton would never understand. Sometimes things just crackle, but his spires always sat quite still, pointing up and nothing more. He liked to see his ideas built in stone, crafted and raised, but I could never wait around long enough to see them through – to wait for the unsubtle hands of workmen to dent and stain the beauty of my visions. Stain them like they had stained the spire in Frankfurt.

At St Augustine on the Merryfold, I introduced a helix to the transverse rib, so it tugged my heart upwards; then in Hollywield, I twisted the lateral ridge to make it soar. People started to talk about my work, half in scandal, half in wonder. Not long after, I was invited to help design the new Lincoln Cathedral. Stratton warned me to keep things firm and true, but the form of the main chamber was just too beautiful to waste. I worked hard, and after a month of adjustments, the spire felt like its tiles would sail right off the roof, fly up into the sky, such was its resonance. They start the construction on that one next year, but that spire is nothing to me now. I have nothing in my life but one true design, a perfect, twisted, confused mess of a spire. For I, too, have seen The Lord’s True Spire. It creaks in the corners of my mind, the vision, like a house cut from willow-wood, ever creaking and shuffling. I will never again feel alone, because he is there, Hancel and his damn spire.

It began on the eve of Michaelmas. The afternoon sun was burning down, making hot work of the day. Up the open street, a figure walked towards me. He was a grizzled ogre of a man, branching out in all directions. He loomed over me in a stained sacking cloak, a deep hood darkening his face, so I could see only his chin. He barely spoke, except to slur a confirmation of who I was in a fading German accent.

“You Chandler?” he asked. “Here. Take this, I wait for the reply.” And he just stood there, his bulk throwing a shadow across the faded paper. I opened the seal, wiping the smudged wax on my trousers, and read the note. In the middle of the sheet was written neatly, “The Lord’s True Spire will be built.” Apart from that, there was nothing, so I flipped it over, looking for more, but the rest was empty.

I looked up at the German, squinting as the bright rays of sun gleamed around the edge his head. His arms were folded, and he looked back impassively. I stammered, “Err… yes?” And yet, he stood stock still, a mildly vacant look on his face. “Look – who sent you? What’s this about?”

He grinned, a sickly sight, rotten teeth bulging under his lips like toadstools, and he leaned forward, the sun crowned above his head, blinding me slightly. “Well then Chandler? Do you accept?”

“Accept what? Look, if you want the True Spire, I’m your man, but I want to know what this means.”

“What this means…,” he began, as he loomed above me, close, so that his hot, stench ridden breath tingled against my face, “…is that you accept. I will take you to see Hancel now.”

My eyes must have revealed my shock, so surprised was I to hear of the possibility that Hancel, the prophet of the Spire, could have lived, but I had no chance to exclaim. Without pausing, Mueller had grabbed my sleeve, and began walking back up the street, dragging me by the arm through the mud. “Hey! Hey! Let go, man!” I pulled back, struggling to break free, but only succeeded in jarring my arm all the harder. “What are you doing with me?”

He stopped and turned. “You, Chandler, you will design The Lord’s True Spire for Hancel. Then I, Mueller, I will build The Lord’s True Spire. You agree to design the spire, because you can design the spire, and I shall build it, because I can build it. But before I can build it, you must design it, and before you can design it, Hancel must show you what must be built. So you will come with me, and then one day, you will give me the plans, and I, Mueller, I will build The Lord’s True Spire.” He turned away, and walked on, no longer pulling my arm, no longer needing to. If anyone on God’s green Earth could build a True Spire, it could only be myself. I had to meet Hancel, back from the grave, and turn his vision into reality.

I’d gotten used to carriages, so travelling along a bumpy dirt track on a creaking old cart was less than reassuring. We’d moved out of the town, travelled through hard-worked fields, beyond the lays of the local landowners, into the remote freeholds. We forded rivers, and wound our way into the foothills, in amongst the newly bare miles of old forest, treeless and tired. It took two days, and I heard barely a word from Mueller, whose patience seemed never to tire of the tedious background of desolate nature.

We eventually reached a rocky outcrop leaning steeply, its red rocks jutting out above the landscape. I was led from the cart out against the rock face, where a steep stairway was cut into the cliff. We climbed up the pathway, with the ground falling quickly away on the left side. Above the tops of the surrounding trees, we could see far out across a valley. Thick clouds were boiling in the sky, and out across the panorama mist and rain obscured the horizon. This place felt cold and desolate, almost angry, a feeling exacerbated by the ache in my limbs and brittle cold in my bones.

The stairs rose high, so the wind whipped against us, the damp air filling with drizzle, staining the faint pink rocks into bright oranges and dark reds. I could see our final destination, looming hard on the cliff above us. Evil gargoyles posed, forming an elaborate dance around an entranceway. What once could have been a natural cave now flared defiance and power against the elements. My stomach lurched, as the mist caught in my eyes. At first, I thought it was nausea from the growing precipice off to my side, but it felt more like the flying feeling I only ever found in the perfect spires in my head. It roared up and overtook me, and I had to catch myself to avoid stumbling. I felt like the ugly figurines were pulling at my soul, rushing me forward too fast to control, its lofty archway floating as a pure curve. Mueller took my shoulder, “You see it too? So solid, so strong and deep. Sometimes, it almost crushes me with its weight.”

“Who made this?” I whispered.

“I made it, though others carved those statues. I found it hard, so hard, but I managed it. It took all I had to push the rock into the forms Brother Hancel wanted, but somehow I managed. But the True Spire… Well… That’s why you are here.”

We climbed the last steps up to the entrance, and I ducked through the opening into the cliff, even though the arch rose high above my head. The cave felt dry and warm after the ravaged wilderness outside, wide and open, with a smoothed floor, roughly square walls and ceiling, with torches that blackened the walls placed at regular intervals. In the centre of the room, a small group of people sat around an old man, whose ragged figure, with torn cloak and bedraggled hair, looked like no monk I had ever seen, and yet seemed to fit perfectly in this remote place, like a hermit cut from the same rock as his hole.

The old man looked up, glancing at me and then to Mueller, and spoke in a torrent of German. Mueller replied, and Hancel smiled. Mueller turned to me, “He speaks no English, and you speak no German, so I will translate.” But there was no need for words, as the monk beckoned me over, rising to his feet with the help of those around him. He murmured something to me, and walked on shaking legs, clearly excited. He leant forward grabbing my hand, looking intensely at me. This was Hancel, the diviner of visions, scriber of the forms of heaven onto paper. To this day I feel his gaze should have melted my heart, should have turned my soul in spirals, but his was the gaze of an old man, a little crazed, but mostly old and tired. He smiled again, turned, pulling me with him, and moved towards a wooden desk that looked somewhat out of place in the corner.

A covered wick lamp burned gently on the desk, a thin smooth light in contrast to the flickers filling the rest of the cavern. Papers were spread wildly across the desk, apparently randomly strewn. I heard Mueller’s voice behind me as I neared the desk, “Those are the plans, Chandler. The beautiful plans for The Lord’s True Spire. I get lost in them, but they are unworkable. It is a thing of beauty, but… but… they are beyond my skills. Such a building could never stand.”

Hancel looked at me, and said, with some desperation in his voice, "Götter Richten Spitz. Ich wurde von Engels geführt. Es muß gebildet werden.” I didn’t understand the words, but I understood the intent. I nodded. Mueller came up behind me. “Careful,” he said. “These are writings made by others. Angels have guided the brother’s hand, to see these is to stare beyond the abyss, to the immortal.”

This was a moment I had dreamt of, had never expected to happen. I lent over the desk, and the paper lent back. It swooped up, it enveloped me. I could make out marks on the paper, but it took all the concentration I had to see them. I felt lifted, overwhelmed. I saw a towering construct, a megalith, twisting, spiralling, beaming a beacon of fire and light, burning faith into the sky. I gripped the table as the drawings tried to pull me into them, crackling. Everything I had ever learned was here, twisted into dimensions beyond my comprehension. I closed my eyes, and the spire swung on in my mind, curving upwards. I gulped the air. I had to stop it spinning. I drove my mind to the root of it. The base, the base is what all spires lie upon, and if I were to rebuild these designs arcing through my mind into an earthly spire, that’d be where to begin from. I swam, gliding above the upward force of emotion and wonder, trying to find some patterns from which the design must be rooted. The vast curls of arcing joists always seemed to bend and turn, twisting me, and preventing me from searching down, till my mind grew weary and I found it hard to resist the continual whirl. I must have fainted, because darkness and pain jolted against this vision, deflecting its vast capture for a moment, but I noticed little of it. For hours, the lights, angel dust in my mind, danced in brilliance, as I floated in a trance.

I woke with a start, drenched with water. Mueller was standing over me, bucket in hand, the others standing further away. I felt the pulse of the spire in the background of my mind, but it had faded to the point where I could concentrate on the world in front of me. Mueller said, “You were out for a while. I’ve never seen someone be pulled so strongly by the designs. I had no idea. I’m sorry.” I knew no one else could have been so affected. Deep within the sketches, I could see patterns, and it was those patterns that entranced me so, something so fitting within the geometry of a spire, that someone else would have missed it.  And yet it was the heart of the design. This was The Lord’s True Spire, and if I could find the root of the Pattern, then I, Adam Chandler, would be the one to build His spire.

Hancel stood above me, his concern layered over of his ever-manic expression. He spoke in hushed tones with Mueller, and turned back to me, looking intently at me, “Was sahen Sie?” Mueller looked over at me and shrugged. He said, “I expect you know as little as I, what you saw. You’ve been unconscious for hours. Have some food, and I’ll introduce you to the others.” I looked over, and the three men stood near the entrance to the cave, looking on with concern. Hancel had turned back to his precious drawings, picking up the papers one by one, checking them, almost nurturing them. Mueller came back over with some stew, greasy and grey, in a tarnished wooden bowl.

He waved the others over, but two seemed reluctant to come closer, as if I were cursed, some kind of portentous threat. The third stepped up, grinning, an instantly likeable face. I learnt from Mueller that his name was Orsalli, a master carver from Italy, the one who had overseen the carving of the gargoyles on the entrance to the caves. I looked instinctively over to the entrance and shivered. The statues seemed to me now more as a guard to keep me in, than to protect from the outside world. I feared the power the arch held, somehow connected with the power of the designs on the desk, though I couldn’t see the Pattern in their construction. Orsalli saw the twinge in my face and nodded, though it was Mueller who spoke. “We all feel it, they overbear us all, except Hancel. Orsalli doesn’t talk about them at all. The arch I copied from the designs only in rough form, but those gargoyles… They are perfect copies. Sometimes it’s like they are watching us. No, not watching, assessing us.” I felt a wave of exhaustion fall over me, pulling me down. I barely felt the men pull me to a bed.

For a week I stayed in the cave, too afraid to try and look at the designs again, though Hancel looked over them every day, touching each corner, caressing the pages. I was worn thin from the experience, and didn’t want to face what I knew I would eventually have to. Part of me wanted to get up and leave, but I knew I never would, never could. I had seen the Patterns at the edges of the perfect spire, and if I could trace them to their source, I would know all their meaning, and I would have it in my reach to build a pathway to God. Hancel, I felt, knew this, as he kept glancing over to me, and whispering with the others. I don’t know if he feared me, or perhaps feared what I could do, but he left me to my rough sacking bed, as I spent days trying to reclaim the parts of my thoughts that the True Spire had invaded.

I had learnt from Mueller that the spire would be built on the outcrop above our heads, something I privately thought madness, though Mueller seemed confident it could be done. They wanted to build the True Spire in seclusion, to protect themselves from the far-reaching arm of a jealous Church, one that had tried to kill Hancel for his dream. Complete folly, to hide The Lord’s True Spire in the deserted wilderness. Perhaps I would take the design to Rome, a fitting place to raise the Spire, at the centre of the Church. Better still, I would build it in Canterbury, establish a new Church here in England, a true Church of pure worship, illuminated in glory through the Spire, as a channel to God. I felt torn, fearful of facing the designs again, but ever more troubled by my lack of action. The Spire was calling to me, waiting for me to build it, to raise it to the sky.

Even with his knowledge of building, Mueller had failed to order the papers in any meaningful way, but he talked them through with me, and together we were able to make some progress. In the time when Hancel slept, he leafed through the pages, spreading them out, sometimes re-ordering one or two. I found it difficult work, trying to envisage the physical marks on the pages without the blazing memory of what they represented consuming me, but we had finally moved the papers into an order where Mueller was able to see the overall construct. Initially he discussed the general form with me, but as he shaped them, his words began to stumble. He looked dazed, lost. He just stood there, turning the pages over and over, until tears streamed down his face. Orsalli had to pull the papers from his hands, and lead him to his bed. Poor Mueller had finally seen the full design for The Lord’s True Spire, and it had overwhelmed him, broken him. There was no more preparation that could be done. The general shape of the True Spire was laid out on the table, just beyond my view. The Pattern flickered in the background of my memory. If I could put them together, before their power overwhelmed me, as it had Mueller, then I would see the Truth.

The lights were dimmed; I could sense the others watching me apprehensively, Hancel, woken by Orsalli, among them. I rose carefully to my feet, calculating my every move. I was drawing out the patterns that old Stratton had taught me, the basic geometry for all spires. The simplest and most basic forms, that point up and nothing more. At the root of all elaboration was the most basic spire. My experience had taught me that to elaborate on this, I had to think in spirals; place spirals onto the basic spire shape and you can produce no end of beautiful elaboration. If I could strip away the confusion, maybe I could get back to the basic spire shape, and from that follow the spirals back up.

I stood over the desk, my eyes closed, and yet I could already feel the throbbing power out before me. I opened my eyes, and lurched forwards. I caught myself before the drawings could pull me into them. I stared at what lay before me – Mueller had done a good job of sorting the papers – the basic shape of a spire was laid out, but it was in the form needed to build from the ground up, not to see the patterned geometry. I felt my eyes burning inside, but this distinction from how I normally view spires gave me a ledge on which to hang my soul. My ears began to roar, as I felt my breath being drawn out of me. I scanned the structure, tagging the corners in my mind; a frame here, a cornet there; stripping away the all the beautiful embellishment. I felt shame, dishonour, like I was fouling the majesty of the Heavens themselves. I was compelled to turn away, but that small, stubborn core that was formed by Stratton’s insistent lectures and beatings was still scanning for the basic shape, and before I could pull myself away, I saw it.

The centre of the spire, in amongst the twisting balustrades, was laden heavily with all its finery. I felt my stomach turn hard inside me. I could make out the high vault, the lateral and transverse ridges. They flickered, fading in and out like mist, swamped by beauty and awe. My eyes scanned the paper, and I could see the whole main arcade forming down to the base. All the lofted ornamentation, the complex swirling design, none of it prepared me for the clean, pure nature of what lay beneath, like the simple beat behind a complex orchestra. I felt the frame build itself upwards, inexorably perfect. I almost had measure of the core, but already the spire was building itself onwards inside my head, spirals upon spirals, dancing upwards, in light and heat. I could feel them rushing, faster, thinner, more and more intricate above me. The Pattern was filling out, like a maze formed from the core, singing the harmony of beauty and pageant. I felt heat rising within me, a power surging through my veins. My mind grew outwards, and in my body, my muscles thickened and grew strong. I could feel the Spire all around me, the light rushing past, whipping the breeze through the cavern. I looked up, as the papers caught in the wind, scattering off the table.

Around me the designs danced in the sky, the Pattern set in my head coiling through the air. I sensed the others in the rooms, more tasting them than seeing them, as the colours washed past them. Three of the men were backing away, but Hancel stood still as rock. I felt myself begin to change, proud and powerful. I threw out my arms, and the rock above me flew away, flying high into the now open sky. The clouds far above were swirling pink and white. The cavern’s floor was liquefying as I felt myself become one with the Spire. The visions of light were being spun from the earth, the tall arches shooting out from the ground around me. I conducted a vast orchestra, twisting the rock higher and higher.  The Spire grew, strands of rock interlacing and cementing into place, as the clouds grew blindingly white, wisping softly to the call from Earth. I could taste the very fragrance of immortality on the air.

And yet, even as Angelsong rang in my ears, I could feel the presence of Hancel, a brooding and dark discord in all the harmony. Faint, as if he were miles away across a valley, I could hear his old voice crying out, “Nein! Nein!” Much more powerful was his grim glowing soul, which I could feel, caught within itself, even as I was spread out wide. No, it spoke, God’s Word lies within me. I was chosen and carried the weight of the Spire in me for decades. I distantly felt his frail fingers tearing into my skin. I am the Spire, I am the chosen one.

My faith put me far beyond him, risen high above his touch, but my fragile body was trapped down where the cavern had once been. I felt a thundering pain sear through me, pulling me back, my soaring soul falling down, into my frail form. I could feel him tearing at my eyes, biting, twisting, anything to stop my ascendancy over him.

I pulled back, tearing myself away, and I felt a wave of pure power sear across me. All the beauty, pure white light, I was wrenched from, and the pain grew stronger. I scrabbled back, easily pushing the old man away from me, but above me, the threaded rock started to groan and creak. I realised too late: I had searched down so far to find a perfect base from which to build the Spire, and I had found the depths of my own soul. Only from my own soul could I have build The Lord’s True Spire, and from my soul, a great tower had been sent up to Heaven, and now my soul had been pulled back into my body, by that old fool Hancel. The half-formed Spire above me was buckling, and as its physical form collapsed down, the connections to my soul were severed forever, a shear agony tearing across the very whole of my being. I fell to the ground, as the roaring screams of the night filled the air.

I awoke I know not how much later. The place where the cavern had once been was covered with great chunks of broken rock, yet I lay in the centre, untouched. I winced as I saw the crushed bodies of Orsalli and his two companions. The hulking figure of Mueller was crouched in a corner, his eyes blinking, looking at me. There was no sign of Hancel, though my face was scratched and painful through his efforts. My body was wasted, my muscles thin and wiry, like they had been stretched out. I felt parched, and inconsolably tired, yet in me I still felt the faint glow of my soul, flickering on. Mueller moved over to me, and wordlessly lifted me over his shoulder. He carried me back down the largely broken stairway, back into civilization. To this day, he insists he remembers nothing of our time there. My life as it was had ended, I never dared make another spire for fear of inducing in the designs some part of the Patterns which have ever since haunted my mind. I have dedicated my life to the path of the Lord, Jesus Christ our Saviour, in the hope that the echoing noise of the designs of The Lord’s True Spire will one day be banished from me, but a small part of my soul craves it. If Hancel lives, I understand his pain. Without his designs I cannot near the understanding of what happened to me that night, yet even with all those beautiful plans pouring from his mind, he can never connect them up, never achieve that union. My only hope is, come the final day, I may come before the Lord, and finally complete my communion to Heaven.