Lasher (89 page)

My sister continued, emboldened when she saw I did not contradict or even speak at all.

“And the Queen of England on the throne now is your sister,” she said, “and so frightened is she of the blood from her mother that makes monsters that she will never suffer a man to touch her, and never wed!”

My father tried to interrupt her, but she drove him back with her pointed finger as if it were a weapon that weakened him where he stood.

“Silence, old man. You did it. You coupled with Anne when you knew she had the witch’s finger, you knew it—and that, with her deformity and your heritage, the Taltos might come.”

“Who is to prove that such a thing ever happened?” said my father. “You think any woman or man from those times is alive now? Elizabeth, who was then a baby, that is the only one who is living. And the little princess was not in the castle that
night! If she knew she had a living brother, with a claim to the throne of England, he would be dead, monster or no!”

The words struck me as does everything—music, beauty, wonder or fear. I knew. I remembered. I understood. I had only to dwell for a moment in pain on the old story. Queen Anne accused of enchanting His Majesty, and bearing a deformed child in the royal bed. Henry, eager to prove he had not fathered it, had accused her of adultery, and had sent five men—of known laxity and perversity—to pave Anne’s way to the block.

“But they were not the father of the bairn,” said my sister. “It was our father, and I am a witch for it, and you are the Taltos! And the witches of the valley know it. The little people know it—the trivial monsters and outcasts driven into the hills. They dream of a day when I will take a man to my bed who carries the seed in him. And from my loins might spring the Taltos as it did from poor Queen Anne.”

She advanced upon me, looking up into my eyes, her voice harsh and ringing in my ears. I went to cover my ears, but she took my hands.

“And then they would have it again, their soulless demon, their sacrifice. To torment as never a man or a woman was tormented! Ah, yes, you catch this scent that comes from me, and I the scent that comes from you. I am a witch and you are the Evil One. We know each other. On account of this I have taken my vow of chastity as devoutly as Elizabeth. No man will plant a monster in me. But in this valley there are others—witches whether they would be or not—they can smell the scent of the Strong One, the perfume of evil, and it is already in the wind that you have come. Soon the little people will know.”

I thought of those small beings I had seen for an instant at the castle gates. And it seemed at this very minute some sound startled my sister, and she looked about her, and I heard a faint echoing laughter come from the darkness of the stairs.

My father stepped forward.

“Ashlar, for the love of God and His Divine Son, don’t listen to your sister. That she is a witch herself is the perfect truth. She hates you, that you are the Taltos, that you were born knowing, and not she. That she was a mewling child like all the rest. She is but a woman—like your mother—who might give birth to such a miracle, or may never. It is unknown. The little people are sad and easily placated; they are
old and common monsters, they have always lived in the mountains and the valleys of Ireland and Scotland; they will be here when men are gone. They do not matter.”

“But what is the Taltos, Father!” I demanded. “Is this an old and common monster, this Taltos? Whence comes this thing?”

He bowed his head, and gestured that I should listen:

“Against the Romans we protected this valley, when we were warriors of old and gathered the big stones! We protected it against the Danes, the Norsemen and the English as well.”

“Aye,” cried my sister, “and once we protected it from the Taltos when they fled their island and sought to hide from the armies of the Romans in this glen!”

My father turned his back on her and took me by the shoulders. He shut her out.

“Now we protect Donnelaith from our own Scots people,” he said, “and in the name of our Catholic Queen, our sovereign, of our faith. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is our only hope. You must put aside these tales of magic and witchcraft. There is a purpose to what you are and why you have come. You will put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne of England! You will destroy John Knox and all his ilk. Scotland will never be under the boot of the Puritans or the English again!”

“He has no answer for your question, Brother,” cried Emaleth.

“Sister,” I said quietly. “What would you have me do?”

“Leave the valley,” she said, “as you came. Flee for your life and for our sakes before the witches know you are here, before the little people learn! Flee so that they do not bring the Protestants down upon us! You, Brother, are the living proof of their claim. You are the witch’s child, deformed, monstrous! If you stir up the old rites, the Protestants will have us with the blood on our hands. You can fool the eyes of the humans around you. But you cannot prevail in a battle for God. You are doomed.”

“Why not!” I cried. “Why not prevail!”

“These are lies,” said my father. “The oldest lies in this part of the world. St. Ashlar prevailed. St. Ashlar was a Taltos, and for God he built the Cathedral! At the very spot where his wife, the pagan Queen, was burnt for the old faith, a blessed spring bubbled up from the ground with which he baptized all those who lived between the loch and the pass. St. Ashlar slew the other Taltos! He slew them all so that man made in the image
of Christ would rule the earth. Christ’s church is built on the Taltos! If that is witchery, then Christ’s church is witchery. They are one and the same.”

“Aye, he slew them,” cried Emaleth. “In the name of one God instead of another! He led the massacre of his own, to save himself from it. He joined in the fear and hatred and the disgust. He slew his clan to save himself! Even his wife he sacrificed. This is your great saint. A monster who deceived those around him so that he might lead and glut himself with glory and not die with his own breed.”

“For the love of God, child,” said my father to me. “This is our miracle now. It comes once in so many hundred years.”

My sister turned to glare at me, even as he pulled her back.

And I saw them together, looking at me, and I saw them as humans, and how alike they were.

“Wait,” I said softly, so softly that it might as well have been a wild cry. “I see clearly,” I said. “All of us are born with a chance before God. The word
Taltos
means nothing in itself. I am flesh and blood. I am baptized. I have received Holy Orders. I have a soul. Physical monstrosity, that does not keep me out of heaven. It is what I do! We are not predestined as the Lutherans and the Calvinists would have us believe.”

“No one here argues with this, Brother,” said Emaleth.

“Then let me lead the people, Emaleth,” I said. “Let me prove by good works that I do indeed have the grace of God in me. I am not an evil thing because I
will not be
an evil thing. When I have done wrong to others it was in error! If I was born as you say, and I know now it is true, then perhaps there was a purpose, that the power of my wretched mother should be broken, and that I should overturn my sister, and put Mary Stuart on the throne.”

“Born knowing. You are born the dupe of those who hold you prisoner. That is what the Taltos has always been. ‘Find the Taltos, make the Taltos,’ ” she cried mockingly. “ ‘Breed it for the fire of the gods! that the rain shall fall and the crops grow!’ ”

“That is old now and does not matter,” said my father. “Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Jack of the Green. He is our God, and the Taltos is not our sacrifice but our saint. The Blessed Mother is our Holda. When the drunken men of the village don the skins and horns of animals, it is to walk in the Procession to the manger, not to cavort as of old.

“We are one with old spirits and the One True God. We are
at peace with all of nature, because we have made the Taltos into St. Ashlar! And in this valley we have known safety and prosperity for a thousand years. Think on it, Daughter, a thousand years! The little people fear us! They do not trouble us. We leave out the milk at night in offering, and they dare not take more than what we leave.”

“It’s coming to an end,” she said. “Get out, Ashlar, lest you give the Protestants exactly what they need. The witches of this valley will know you. They will know your scent. Go while there is time and live out your life in Italy where no one knows what you are.”

“I have a soul within me, Sister,” I said. I raised my voice as much as I dared. “Sister, trust in me. I can rally the people. I can at least keep us safe.”

She shook her head. She turned her back.

“Can
you
do it?” cried my father to her, accusing her. “Can you, with your magic spells and evil books and sickening incantations? Can you make anything happen in the world at large! Our world is about to perish. What can
you
do? Ashlar, listen to me, we are a small valley, a small glen, only one tiny part of the north country. But we have endured and we would live on. And that is all the world is, finally, small valleys, groups of people who pray and work and love together as we do. Save us, Son. I implore you. Call upon the God you believe in to help you. And what you were—and what your father and mother did—these things do not matter one whit.”

“No Protestant or Catholic can prove anything against me,” I said softly. “Sister, would you tell them what you know?”

“They will know.”

I walked out of the hall. I was the priest now, not the humble Franciscan but the missionary, and I knew what I had to do.

I went through the castle yard and over the bridge and down the snowy path towards the church. From far around came the people carrying torches, looking at me leerily and then excitedly, and whispering the name “Ashlar,” to which I nodded and gave a great open sign with both hands.

Again I spied one of those tiny twisted creatures, garbed and hooded in black, and running very fast through the field towards me and then away. It seemed the others saw him, and drew together, whispering, but then followed me on down the road.

Out in the fields, I saw men dancing. By the light of
torches, and dark against the sky, I saw them with the horns and the skins! They had begun their old pagan Yuletide revelry. I must make the Procession, and take them to the Baby Jesus. There was no doubt.

By the time I reached the gates of the town there was a multitude. I went to the Cathedral and bade them wait. I went into the sacristy, where two elderly priests stood together, looking at me fearfully.

“Give me robes, give me vestments,” said I. “I would bring the valley together. I must at least have my cassock to begin and a white surplice. Do as I say.”

At once they hurried to help me dress. Several young acolytes appeared, and put on their surplices and their gowns.

“Come on, Fathers,” I said to the frightened priests. “See, the boys are braver than you are. What is the hour? We must make the Procession. The Mass must be said at the stroke of twelve! Protestant, Catholic, pagan. I cannot save them all, nor bring them together. But I can bring Christ down upon the altar in the Transubstantiation. And Christ will be born tonight in this valley as He has always been!”

I stepped out of the sacristy and to the crowd, I raised my voice.

“Prepare for the Christmas Procession,” I declared. “Who would be Joseph and who would be our Blessed Mother, and what child have we in this village that I may place in the manger before I step to the Altar of God to say the Mass? Let the Holy Family be flesh and blood tonight, let them be of the valley. And all of you who would take the shape and skins of animals, walk in the Procession to the manger and kneel there as did the ox and the lamb and donkey before the little Christ. Come forward, my faithful ones. It is almost time.”

Everywhere I saw rapt faces; I saw the grace of God in every expression. And only a glimpse of a small deformed woman, peering at me from beneath a heavy wrap of coarse cloth. I saw her bright eye, I saw her toothless smile, and then she had vanished, and the crowd closed around her as if, among the press of the tall ones, she had gone unseen. Only a common thing, I thought. And if there be little people, then they are of the Devil, and the Light of Christ must come and drive them out.

I closed my eyes, folded my hands together so that they would make a small church of their own, very narrow and
high, and I began in a soft voice to sing the plaintive beautiful Advent hymn:

Voices joined me, voices and the melancholy sound of flutes, and the tapping of tambourines, and even of soft drums:

High in the tower, the bell began its ringing, too rapid for the Devil’s Knell, but more the clarion to call all the faithful from mountain and valley and shore.

There were a few cries of “The Protestants will hear the bell! They will destroy us.” But more and lustier cries of “Ashlar, St. Ashlar, Father Ashlar. It is our saint returned.”

“Let the Devil’s Knell be sounded!” I declared. “Drive the witches and the evil ones from the valley! Drive out the Protestants, for surely they will hear the Devil’s Knell too.”

There were cheers of approbation.

And then a thousand voices were raised in the Advent hymn and I retired into the sacristy to put on my full raiment, my Christmas chasuble and vestments of bright green-gold, for the town had them, yes, the town had them as beautiful and embroidered and rich as any I had ever seen in wealthy Florence, and I was soon dressed as a priest should be in the finest
linen
and gold-threaded robes. The other priests dressed hastily. The acolytes ran to distribute the blessed candles for the Procession, and from all the country round, I was told, the faithful were coming, and the faithful, who had been afraid to do it before, were bringing the Christmas greens.