Lasher (56 page)

“Franciscans from Italy. You mean the Order of St. Francis of Assisi was there.”

“Most definitely so. The Order of St. Francis was popular right up to the time of Anne Boleyn,” he said. “The Observant Friars were the refuge of Queen Catherine, when Henry divorced
her, of course. But I don’t think Observant Friars built or maintained the Cathedral at Donnelaith; it was far too elaborate, too rich, too full of ritual for simple Franciscans. No, it was probably the Conventuals; they were the Franciscans who kept the property, I believe. Whatever the case, when King Henry broke with the pope, and went to looting the monasteries all around, the Clan of Donnelaith drove out his soldiers without a moment’s hesitation. Terrible, terrible bloody battles in the glen. And even the bravest British soldiers were loath to go up there.”

“The name of the saint.”

“I don’t know. I told you. Probably some meaningless Gaelic collection of syllables and when we break it down we’ll find it’s descriptive like Veronica or Christopher.”

I sighed. “And John Knox.”

“Well, Henry died, as you know, and his Catholic daughter, Mary, took the throne, and another bloodbath ensued and this time it was Protestants who were burnt or hanged or whatever. But next, we had Elizabeth the First! The Great Queen, and once again Great Britain was Protestant.

“The Highlands were prepared to ignore the whole thing, but then came John Knox, the great reformer, and preached his famous sermon against the idolatry of the papists, at Perth in 1559, and it was war in the glen as the Presbyterians descended upon the Cathedral. Burnt it, smashed the glass to pieces, laid ruin the Cathedral school, burnt the books, all of it gone. Horrible horrible story. Of course they claimed the people were witches in the glen, that they worshiped a devil who looked like a man; that they had it all mixed up with the saints; but it was Protestant against Catholic finally.

“The town never recovered. It hung on till the late sixteen hundreds, when the last of the clan was killed in a fire in the castle. Then there was no more Donnelaith. Just nothing.”

“And no more saint.”

“Oh, the saint was gone in 1559, whoever he was, God bless him. His cult disappeared with the Cathedral. You have only a little Presbyterian town after that, with the ‘abominable’ pagan circle of stones outside it.”

“What do we know about the pagan legends in particular?” I asked.

“Only that there are those who still believe them. Now and then, someone will come from as far away as Italy. They will ask about the stones. They seek the road to Donnelaith. They
even ask about the Cathedral. Yes, I’m telling you the truth; they’ll come asking for the Glen of Donnelaith and they’ll journey up there to look about in search of something. And then you are here, asking the very same questions, really, in your own way. The last person was a scholar from Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam.”

“Yes, there is an order of scholars there. Indeed, they have a Motherhouse in London also. They are organized like religious but they have no beliefs. Over my lifetime they have come some six times to explore the glen. They have a very strange name. Luckier than the saint, I suppose. Their name is unforgettable.”

“What is it?” asked I.

“Talamasca,” he said. “They are really very well-educated men, with a great respect for books. Here, see this little Book of the Hours? It’s a gem! They gave it to me. They always bring me something. See this? This is one of the first King James Bibles ever printed. They brought that last time they visited. They go camp in that glen, really, they do. They stay for weeks and then they go away, invariably disappointed.”

I was overcome with excitement. All I could think of for a moment was Marie Claudette’s strange tale to me when I was only three of how a scholar from Amsterdam had come to Scotland and rescued poor Deborah, daughter of Suzanne. For a moment all manner of images came back to me, from the daemon’s memories, and I almost lost consciousness. But time was too precious to indulge in any trances now. I had this kindly little doctor of history and had to get everything I could from him.

“Witchcraft,” I said. “Witchcraft up there. The burnings in the seventeenth century. What do you know of them?”

“Oh, ghastly tale. Suzanne, the Milkmaid of Donnelaith. On that I happen to have an invaluable piece of material, one of the original pamphlets circulated in those days by the witch judges.”

He went to his press and took out of it a small, crumbling quarto of pages. I could see a coarse engraving of a woman surrounded by flames that resembled more huge leaves or tongues of fire. And in thick English letters was written:

“I will buy this from you,” I said.

“Not on your life,” says he. “But I’ll have it copied in detail for you.”

“Good enough.” I took out my wallet and laid down a wad of American dollars.

“That will do, that will do. Don’t get carried away! What a passionate fellow you are. Must be the Irish blood. The French are by nature so much more reticent. It’s my granddaughter who does the copying and it won’t take her that long. She’ll give you a lovely transcript in facsimile form on parchment.”

“Good, now tell me what it says.”

“Oh, same old foolishness. These pamphlets were circulated all over Europe. This one was printed in Edinburgh in 1670. Tells how Suzanne, the cunning woman, came under the sway of Satan, and gave him her soul, and how she was tried and burnt, but her daughter the merry-begot was spared, for the child had been conceived on the first of May, and was sacred to God, and no one dared touch her.

“The daughter was at last entrusted to the care of a Calvinist minister who took her to Switzerland, I believe, for the salvation of her soul. Name Petyr van Abel.”

“Petyr van Abel, you are certain of that name? It says it there?” I could scarcely contain myself. This was the only written word I had ever beheld to confirm the tale which Marie Claudette had told me. I did not dare say this was my ancestor as well. Having Tyrone McNamara seemed gauche enough. I merely fell silent, overwhelmed, and even contemplated stealing the pamphlet.

“Yes, indeed, Petyr van Abel, right here,” said he. “All written by a minister here in Edinburgh and printed here too and sold for quite a profit. These things were popular, you know, just like the magazines of today. Imagine people sitting around the fire and looking at this horrid picture of the poor girl burning.

“You know they were burning witches, right here in Edinburgh—at the Witches’ Well, on the Esplanade, right up till the seventeen hundreds.”

I made some murmur of total sympathy. But I was too stunned by this little confirmation to think clearly. Again I might have yielded to a load of Lasher’s memories if I had allowed myself to do so. Hurriedly, I put my questions:

“But by the time of the witch, the Cathedral was long burnt,” said I, trying to get my bearings.

“Yes, everything was pretty much gone. Only sheepherders up there. But do understand, some historians do believe that the witchcraft persecutions were a last bit of Protestant-Catholic feuding. There may be some truth to it. What they say specifically is this—life became very dull under John Knox, what with stained glass and statues gone, and all the old Latin hymns banned; and colorful Highland customs abandoned; and the people went back to some of their pagan ceremonies just to put some fancy in their lives, you know, some color.”

“Do you think that was the case in Donnelaith?”

“No. It was a typical trial. The Earl of Donnelaith was a poor man, living in a dreary castle. We hear nothing of him in that century, except that he later died in the fire that killed his son and grandson. The witch was a poor cunning woman from the village, called to account for bewitching some other humble person. We hear of no Sabbats. But God knows, they were held in other places up there. And this woman had been known to go to the pagan circle of stones, and that was used against her.”

“The stones themselves. What do you know of them?”

“Big controversy. Some say they are as old as Stonehenge, maybe older. I think they have something to do with the Picts, that at one time there were carvings on them. They’re very rough, those stones, and all of different sizes. They are remnants of what was once there, and I think at one time, they were deliberately defaced—all the inscriptions chipped off or worn off, and then the rest of the work was done by the weather.”

He opened a small book of drawings. “This is the art of the Picts,” he said.

I felt a terrible moment of disorientation. I don’t know what it meant. I shall never forget it. I looked at these warriors, rows and rows of crude little profile figures with shields and swords. I didn’t know what to make of it.

“I think the stones were their worshiping place. To hell with Stonehenge. But who will ever know? Perhaps the stones belonged to one of these strange tribes, or even the little people.”

“Who owns this valley?” said I.

The man wasn’t sure. All the land had been cleared up there by the government, the last starving settlers driven out for their
own good. Pitiful. Just pitiful. Many had gone to America. Did I know of the Highland clearances?

“I’ve told you all I know,” he said. “I wish I knew more,”

“You will,” I said. “I will leave you the means to make a study.”

Then I begged him to join me on my trek to Donnelaith, but he swore he wasn’t up to it. “I love that glen,” he said. “I did go there many years ago with a man from the Amsterdam order. Alexander Cunningham was his name, a brilliant fellow. He paid for everything, and what a picnic we took with us. We stayed in the glen for a full week. I tell you I was glad to get back to civilization. But he said the strangest thing when he left me here, after our final dinner.

“ ‘You didn’t really find what you wanted up there, did you?’ I asked him.

“ ‘No, indeed, I didn’t, and thank God for that, if there is one.’ He went out of the house and then he came back. ‘Let me tell you something, old friend. Never make light of the legends of those glens,’ he said. ‘And never laugh at the story of Castle Glamis. The little people are still to be found, and they’d bring the witches to the Sabbat if they could for the old purpose.’

“Naturally I said to the man, ‘What purpose?’ But he wouldn’t answer on that, and seemed to be sincere in his silence.”

“But what is the Glamis Castle story?” asked I.

“Oh, that there is some curse in that family, you see, and when they tell the new heir he never smiles again. Many have written of that. I’ve been to Glamis Castle. Who knows? But this man from the Talamasca, he was a studious and passionate sort. We had a splendid time up there, in the glen, looking at the moon.”

“But you didn’t see the little people.”

He fell silent, then: “I did see something. But it wasn’t fairies, I don’t think. It was just a smallish man and woman, rather misshapen, same unfortunates you see begging in the streets. I did see those two once very early in the morning, and when I told my Talamasca friend he was in a perfect fury that he himself had not seen them. They didn’t come again.”

“With your own eyes, you saw them. Were they frightening?”

“Oh, they gave me the shivers!” He shook his head. “I don’t like to tell that tale,” he said. “Remember, to us, my friend,
fairies aren’t merely humorous little beings. They are demons of the wild; they are powerful and dangerous and can be vengeful. I’ll tell you this, there are fairy lights in that glen. Fairy lights, those flames that rise up in the night on the distant horizon without explanation. I wish you luck in going there. I really wish I could go. We’ll begin collecting these research materials for you immediately.”

I went home to our fine lodgings in New Town.

Mary Beth had still not come back. I sat alone in our suite, a comfortable pair of bedrooms and a sitting room in between, and I drank my sherry and wrote down all that I could remember of what the man had told me. It was cold in these rooms. It would be cold in the glen. But I had to go there. The saint, the fairies, it’s all mixed up, I thought.

Then, in the silence, a feeling stole over me. Lasher was near. Lasher was in the room, and he knew my thoughts, and was close to me.

“Are you there, beloved?” I asked casually as I jotted down the last few words.

“So they gave you his name,” he said in his secret voice.

“Petyr van Abel, yes, but not the name of the saint.”

“Aye, Petyr,” he said softly. “I remember Petyr van Abel. Petyr van Abel saw Lasher.” His entire demeanor seemed tame and thoughtful. His secret voice was at its most resonant and beautiful.

“Tell me,” I coaxed.

“In the great circle,” he said. “We will go there. I have always been there. I mean that you will go there.”

“Can you be there and with us at the same time?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. But there seemed some doubt in his mind. It was, again, the limits of his thinking.

“Be clever, spirit, who are you?” I asked.

“Lasher, called by Suzanne, in the glen,” said he. “You know me. I have done so well for you, Julien.”

“Tell me where my daughter Mary Beth is, then, spirit. I hope you did not leave her somewhere in this dark city to her own devices.”

“Her devices are very good, Julien, allow me to remind you. But I left her to her own vices rather than devices.”

“Which means what?”

“She found a Scot who would be the father of her witch.”

I shot out of the chair in a protective rage! “Where is Mary Beth?”

But even then I heard her singing as she came down the corridor. She opened the door. She was very red-cheeked and beautiful from the cold, indeed, sort of glistening, and her hair was loose. “Well, I have done it at last,” she said. She danced into the room, and then put a kiss on my cheek. “Don’t look so stricken.”

“But who is the man?”

“Don’t give it another of your precious thoughts, Julien,” she said. “I shall never again lay eyes on him. Lord Mayfair is a good name, don’t you think?”

And so that was the lie that was written home, just as soon as we knew she had conceived. Lord Mayfair of Donnelaith had fathered her child. Indeed her “marriage” had been held in that “town”—though of course there was no town at all.