Lasher (57 page)

But I jump ahead of my story. I had the keen feeling at that moment that she had mated with success, and as she described this man to me, pure Scots, and black-haired and wicked and charming and very rich, I thought, Well, perhaps this is as good a way to choose a father for one’s child as any.

Any pain I felt, jealousy, shame, fear, whatever, I buried it inside me. We were committed libertines, she and I. I would not have her laughing at me. Besides, I was too eager to go to Donnelaith.

As I told her what I knew, our beloved spirit did nothing to come between us. Indeed, he was quiet that night. We were ail quiet. Though down the street there was quite a bit of talk. Seems one of the local lords had been murdered.

I didn’t learn till later who it was. And even then the name didn’t mean anything. But I think I know now that it was the father of Mary Beth’s baby.

Let’s go on to Donnelaith now. And let me tell you what I discovered there.

We set out the very next day, with two big carriages, one for ourselves and our luggage, the other for several servants needed to assist us. We went north to Darkirk, to the inn there, and from Darkirk on together on horseback, with two pack animals, and two of the local Scotsmen also on horseback to guide us.

We were both great lovers of horses, you understand, and riding in this treacherous hilly terrain was rather a treat for us. We had fine horses for the trip and provisions to stay the night, though not long after we set out, I became aware of my
age, and aware of many aches and pains that I had been able to ignore before this time. Our guides were young. Mary Beth was young. I was pretty much on my own, bringing up the rear, but the beauty of the surrounding hills, of the rich forests, and the sky itself drugged me and made me very happy.

There was a chilly haunted glory to all this, however. Scotland! But I had to go all the way to the glen. When I felt the urge to turn round, I kept my counsel and went on. We had a hasty lunch, then rode until almost sunset.

It was just then that we came to the glen, or rather a slope descending upon it. And from a high promontory, just out of the deep forest of Scots pine and alder and oak, we saw the distant castle across the gulf, a hollow overgrown monstrous thing above the beautiful glowing waters. And in the valley itself the high straggled arches of the Cathedral, and the circle of stones, remote, and austere but plainly visible.

Darkness or no darkness, we decided to press on. We lighted our lanterns and went down through the scattered groves of trees, and into the grassy glen, and did not pitch camp till we had reached the remnants of the town, or more visibly, the village which had lingered on after it.

Mary Beth was for pitching camp in the pagan stones. But the two Scotsmen refused. Indeed, they seemed outraged. “That’s a fairy circle, madam,” said one of them. “You wouldn’t dare to do such a thing as camp there. The little people would take it very ill, believe me.”

“These Scots are as crazy as the Irish,” said Mary Beth. “Why didn’t we go on to Dublin if we wanted to hear about leprechauns?”

Her words gave me a little thrill of fear. We were now deep in the broad glen. The village did not include one single stone left standing. Our tents, our lanterns must have been visible for miles around. And suddenly, I felt strangely naked and undefended.

We should have gone up to the ruins of the castle, I thought. And then I realized it. We had not heard from our spirit all day. We had not felt his touch, his nudge, his breath.

The thrill of fear deepened. “Lasher, come to me,” I whispered. I feared suddenly that he had gone off to do some terrible thing to those we loved, that he was angry.

But he was quick to respond. As I walked out alone with my unlighted lantern in the tall grass, each step an ordeal since
I was so sore from the ride, he came with a great cooling breeze, and made the grass bow to me in a huge circle.

“I am not angry with you, Julien,” he said. But his voice was thick with suffering. “We are in our land, the land of Donnelaith. I see what you see, and I weep for what I see, for I remember what there was once in this valley.”

“Tell me, spirit,” I said.

“Ah, the great church which you know, and processions of the penitent and the ill come for miles through the hills and down to worship at the shrine. And the thriving town full of shops and tradesmen, selling images…images…”

“Images of what?” asked I.

“What is it to me? I would be born again, and never waste my flesh this next time as I did in those years. I am not the slave of history but rather the slave of ambition. Do you understand the difference, Julien?”

“Enlighten me,” I said. “There are few times when you make me genuinely curious.”

“You are too frank, Julien,” it said. “What I mean to say is this. There is no past. Absolutely none. There is only the future. And the more we learn the more we know—reverence for the past is simply superstition. You do what you must do to make the clan strong. So do I. I dream of the witch who will see me and make me flesh. You dream of wealth and power for your children.”

“I do,” said I.

“There is nothing else. And you have brought me back to this place, which I have never left, that I might know it.”

I was standing there idle under the darkling sky, the valley huge, the ruins of the Cathedral just ahead of me. These words sank into my soul. I memorized them.

“Who taught you these things?” I asked.

“You did,” Lasher said. “It was you and your kind who taught me to want, to aim, to reach, rather than to lament. And now I remind you, for the past calls to you under false pretenses.”

“You think so,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “These stones, what are they? They are nothing.”

“May I see the church, spirit?”

“Oh yes,” said he. “Light your lantern if you will. But you will never see it as I saw it.”

“You’re wrong, spirit. When you come into me, you leave
something of yourself behind. I have seen it. I have seen it with the faithful crowded to the doors, and the candles and the Christmas green—”

“Silence!” he declared and I felt him like the wind wrapping me so roughly suddenly he might knock me over. I went down on my knees. The wind ceased. “Thank you, spirit,” said I. I struck a match, shielding it carefully, and lighted the wick of the lantern. “Won’t you tell me of those times?”

“I’d tell you what I see from here. I see my children.”

“Do you speak of us now?”

But that was all he would say, though he followed me as I made a path through the high grass, over rocky and uneven ground, and came at last to the ruins themselves and stood in the giant nave looking at the broken arches.

Dear God, what a grand cathedral it must have been. I had seen its like all over Europe. It was not in the Roman style, with rounded arches and paintings galore; no doubt it was cold stone, and lofty and graceful as the Cathedral of Chartres or Canterbury.

“But the glass, does anything remain of the glorious glass?” I whispered.

And in mournful answer the wind swept broadly and serenely across the entire darkening glen and passed through the nave, once again, making the wild grass bend to and fro, and ruffling around me as if to embrace me. The moon had risen a bit, and the stars were shining through.

And suddenly beyond the very end of the nave, where the rose window had once been, where the arch stood at its height, I saw the spirit himself, immense, and huge and dark and translucent, spread across the sky like a great storm rolling in, only silent, and collecting and re-collecting and then in one sudden burst dispersing into nothingness.

Clear sky, the moon, the distant mountain, the wood. All that was plain and still and the air felt cold and empty. My lantern burnt on bright. I stood alone. The Cathedral seemed to grow taller around me, and I to be dwarfed and vain and petty and desperate. I sank down to the ground. I drew up my knee, and rested my hand and my chin upon it. I peered through the dark. I wished for Lasher’s memories to come to me.

But nothing came but my loneliness, and my sense of the absolute wonder of my life, and how much I loved my family, and how they flourished beneath the wing of this terrible evil.

Maybe it was so with all families, I thought. At the heart a
curse, a devil’s bargain. A terrible sin. For how else can one attain such riches and freedom? But I didn’t really believe this. I believed, on the contrary, in virtue.

I saw my definition of virtue. To be good, to love, to father, to mother, to nurture, to heal. I saw it in its shining simplicity. “What can you do, you fool?” I asked of myself. “Except keep your family safe, give them the means to live on their own, strong and healthy and good. Give them conscience and protect them from evil.”

Then a solemn thought came to me. I was sitting there still, with the warm light of the lantern about me, and the high church on both sides, and the grass flattened like a bed before me. I looked up again, and saw that the moon had moved right into the great circle of the rose window. The glass of course was all gone. I knew it had been a rose window because I knew what they were. And I knew the meaning as well, the great hierarchy of all things which had prevailed in the Catholic Church and how the rose was the highest of flowers and therefore the symbol of the highest of women, the Virgin Mary.

I thought on that, and on nothing. And I prayed. Not to the Virgin. No, just to the air of this place, just to time, perhaps to the earth. I said: God, as if all this had that name, can we make this bargain? I will go to hell if you will save my family. Mary Beth will go to hell, perhaps, and each witch after her.
But save my family. Keep them strong, keep them happy, keep them blessed
.

No answer came to my prayers. I sat there a long time. The moon was veiled by clouds, then free again and brilliant and beautiful. Of course I did not expect to hear any answer to my prayers. But my bargain gave me hope. We, the witches, shall suffer the evil; and the others shall prosper. That was my vow.

I climbed to my feet, I lifted the lantern and I started to walk back.

Mary Beth had already gone to sleep in her tent. The two guides were smoking their pipes, and invited me to join them. I told them I was weary. I’d sleep and wake early.

“You weren’t praying up there, were you, sir?” asked one of the men. “ ‘Tis a dangerous thing to pray in the ruins of that church.”

“Oh, and why is that?” asked I.

“ ‘Tis St. Ashlar’s church, and St. Ashlar is likely to answer your prayer and who knows what will happen!”

Both men roared with laughter, slapping their thighs and nodding to one another.

“St. Ashlar!” I said. “You said Ashlar!”

“Yes, sir,” said the other, who had not spoken till now. “Was his shrine in olden times, the most powerful saint of Scotland, and the Presbyterians made it a sin to speak his name. A sin! But the witches always knew it!”

Time and space were naught. In the quiet haunted night of the glen, I was remembering: a boy of three, the old witch, the plantation, her tales to me in French. “Called up by accident in the glen…” I whispered to myself, “Come now my Lasher. Come now my Ashlar. Come now, my Lasher! Come now, my Ashlar!”

I began to murmur it, and then to say it aloud, the two men not understanding at all of course, and then out of the heart of the glen came the roaring wind, so fierce and huge it wailed against the mountains.

The tents flapped and whipped in the wind. The men ran to steady them. The lanterns went out. The wind became a gale, and as Mary Beth crept to my side, and held tight to my arm, a storm came down on Donnelaith, a storm of rain and thunder so fierce that we were all cowering before it.

All save I. I righted myself soon enough, realizing it was pointless to cower, and I stared back into it. I stared up into the heavens as the rain pelted and stung my face.

“Damn you, St. Ashlar, that’s who you are! Go to hell with you!” I cried. “A saint, a deposed saint, a saint knocked from his throne! Go back to hell with you. You are no saint. You are a daemon!”

One tent was torn loose and carried away. The guides ran to stop the other. Mary Beth tried to quiet me. The wind and the rain gave their full breath, strong perhaps as a hurricane.

To a peak of anger it came, so we saw a ghastly funnel of black cloud rising suddenly from the grass and spinning and spinning and darkening the whole sky, and suddenly—as swiftly as it had come—it vanished.

I stood stock-still. I was dripping wet. My shirt was half torn from my shoulder. Mary Beth uncovered her hair and walked round in the damp, staring upwards, bravely and curiously.

One of the guides came back to me.

“Goddamnit, man,” said he. “I told you not to pray to him. Whatever in hell did you pray for!”

I laughed softly to myself. “Oh, God, help me,” I sighed. “Is that the proof, Almighty God, that you are not there, that your saints could be such petty demons?”

The air was warming slightly. The men had the lanterns lighted. The water had vanished from the earth as if it had never come at all. We were still battered and wet but the moon was clear again, and flooding the glen with light. We went to right the tents, to dry the bedding.

I lay awake the whole night. As the sun came up, I went to the guides. “I have to know the story of this saint,” said I.

“Well, don’t say his name for god’s sakes,” said the other. “I wish I hadn’t said it last night, I’ll tell you. And I don’t know his story and you won’t hear it from anyone else I know either. It’s an old legend, man, perhaps a joke,” he said, “though we’ll be talking about that storm last night for many a night to come, I can tell you.”

“Tell me all,” I said.

“I don’t know. My grandmother said his name when she wished for an impossible thing, and said always to take care, and never wish for something from him unless you really wanted it. I’ve heard his name once or twice up there in the hills. There’s an old song they sing. But that’s all I know of it. I’m no Catholic. I don’t know saints. No one hereabouts knows saints.”

The other man nodded. “I myself did not know that much. I’ve heard my daughter call on him, though, to make the young men turn their heads to notice her.”