Lasher (91 page)

The bell began to ring faster, indeed madly, with the spirit of rejoicing. The pipes struck up a wild melody, and the drums began to beat.

“To the castle,” cried the people. “It is time for the Laird’s Feast.”

And I found myself raised upon the shoulders of the stout men of the village.

“We will stand against the forces of hell,” cried the people. “We will fight to the death if we must.” It was a good thing they carried me, for the music had become so merry and so loud that I could not have walked. I was spellbound and crazed as they took me through the nave, and this time I did turn to my right and gaze up at the black glass figure of my saint.

Tomorrow when the sun rises, I thought, I will come to you. Francis, be with me. Tell me if I have done well. Then the music overcame me. It was all I could do to sit upright for those who carried me out of the church and into the darkness where the snow lay gleaming on the ground and the torches of the castle blazed.

The main hall of the castle was strewn with green as I had first seen it, with all its many tapers lighted, and as the villagers set me down before the banquet table, the great Yule tree was dragged into the enormous gaping mouth of the hearth and set alight.

“Burn, burn, burn the twelve nights of Christmas,” sang the villagers. The pipes were shrilling and the drums beating. And in came the servers with platters of meat, and pitchers of wine.

“We will have the Christmas Feast after all,” cried my father. “We will not live in fear any longer.”

In came the boys with the roasted boar’s head on its huge platter, and the roasted animals themselves on their blackened spits, and everywhere I saw about me the ladies in their splendid gowns and the children dancing in groups and in circles, and finally all stood up to make informal rings beneath the great roof and lift one foot and do the tribal dance.

“Ashlar,” said my father. “You have given the Lord back to us. God bless you.”

I sat at the table astonished, watching all of them, my brain
throbbing with the beat of the drums. I saw the bagpipers now dancing as they played, which was no small feat. And I watched the circles break and form into other circles. And the smell of the food was rich and intoxicating. And the fire was a great blinding blaze.

I closed my eyes. I do not know how long I lay with my head against the back of the chair, listening to their laughter and to their songs, and to their music. Someone gave me some wine to drink and I took it. Someone gave me some meat and that I took as well. For it was Christmas and I could have meat if I wanted, and must not be the poor Franciscan on this day of all days.

I heard a change come over the room. I thought it merely a lull. And then I realized the drums had begun to beat more slowly. They had begun to sound more ominous and the pipes were playing an attenuated and dark song.

I opened my eyes. The assembly was wrapped in silence, or the spell of the music. I could not tell which. I felt if I moved I would become dizzy myself. I saw the drummers now; saw their fixed expressions, and the somber drunken faces of those who blew the pipes.

This was not Christmas music. This was something altogether darker and more lustrous and mad. I tried to stand up, but the music overcame me. And it seemed the melody had gone away from it, and it was only one theme repeated over and over, like a person reaching, making the same gesture, again and again, and again.

Then came the scent. Ah, it is only my sister, thought I, and I alone know it and I shall stifle whatever desire it creates.

But then a gasp went up from those scattered about the great room, those gathered on the stairs. Indeed, some turned and hid their faces, and others pushed back against the walls.

“What is it?” I cried out. My father stood staring as if no words could reach him. I saw my sister Emaleth the same, and all of my kin and the other chieftains. The drums beat on and on. The pipes whined and ground.

The scent grew stronger, and as I struggled to remain standing I saw a group of people, clothed only in black and white, come into the hall.

I knew these severe garments. I knew these stiff white collars. These were the Puritans. Had they come to make war?

They concealed something with their number, moving forward
in concert, and now it seemed the pipers and the drummers were as wrapped in their music as was I.

I wanted to cry, “Look, the Protestants!” But my words were far away. The scent grew stronger and stronger.

And at last the gathering of people in black broke open and in the circle stood a small bent and dwarfish female, with a great smiling mouth, and a hump upon her back and burning eyes.

“Taltos, Taltos, Taltos!” she screamed, and came towards me, and I knew the scent was coming from her! I saw my sister plunge towards me but then my father caught her and forced her down to the ground. He held her struggling on her knees.

One of the little people, bitter, fiery of eye.

“Aye, but we shall make giants together, my tall brother, my spouse!” she cried. And opening her arms she opened as well the tatters of her ragged gown. I saw her breasts huge and inviting, hanging down upon her small belly.

The smell was in my nostrils, in my head, and as she stepped up onto the table before me, it seemed she grew tall and beautiful in my eyes, a woman of grace and slender limbs and long white fingers reaching out to caress my face.
Pure female of your own ilk
.

“No, Ashlar!” cried my sister, and I saw the downward movement of my father’s fist, and heard her body fall to the stone floor.

The woman before me was beaming; and as I watched, her golden-red hair grew longer and longer, coming down her naked back and down between her breasts. She lifted this veil now and revealed herself to me, cupping her breasts in both hands; and then dropping her hands, she opened the secret lips of the pink wet mouth between her legs.

I knew no reason, only passion, only the music, only the spellbinding beauty. I had been lifted to the table. And she lay down beneath me, and I was lifted over her.

“Taltos, Taltos, Taltos! Make the Taltos!”

The drums beat louder and louder as if there were no limit to the volume. The pipes had become one long drone. And there beneath me, in the golden hair between her legs, was the mouth smiling at me, smiling as though it could speak! It was moist and tender and glowing with the fluid of a woman, and I wanted it, I could smell it, I needed it; I had to have it.

I drew out my organ and drove it into the nether crack and thrust again and again.

It was the ecstasy of nursing from my mother. It was my whores in Florence, the ring of their laughter, the soft squeeze of their plump breasts, it was the hairy secrets beneath their skirts, it was a blaze of flesh tightening on me and drawing out of me cries of ecstasy. But it would not be finished. On and on it went. And to have lived a lifetime with so little of it, I had been a fool, a fool, a fool!

The boards were rattling and booming with our lovemaking. Cups had fallen to the floor. It seemed the heat of the fire was consuming us; the sweat was pouring out of me.

And beneath me—on the hard slats of wood, in the spilt wine and the scraps of meat and the torn linen—lay not the beautiful woman of shimmering red hair, but the tiny dwarfed hag with her hideous grin.

“Oh, God, I do not care, I do not care! Give it to me!” I all but screamed in my passion. On and on it went until there was no memory anymore of reason or purpose or thought.

In a daze, I realized I had been dragged from the dwarfish woman, and that she was undulating on the boards before me, and that something was coming out of that secret wet place where I had put my seed.

“No, I don’t want to see it! Stop it!” I screamed. “Oh, God, forgive me!” But the whole hall rang with laughter, wild laughter vying with the drums and with the pipes to make a din against which I had to cover my ears. I think I bellowed. Bellowed like a beast. But I could not hear myself.

Out of the loins of the hag came the new Taltos, came its long slithering arms, lengthening as they reached out, thin and groping, and fingers growing longer as they walked upon the boards, and at last its head, its narrow slippery head, as even the mother cried in her agony, and it was born knowing, it was born pushing itself free from the dripping egg within the womb, and looking with knowing eyes at me!

Out of her body it slithered, growing taller and taller, its eyes brilliant, its mouth open, its flawless skin gleaming as perfect as that of any human babe. And it fell upon its mother as I had once done, and began to drink from her, first draining one breast and then the other. And then it stood up, and all around the people cheered and roared.

“Taltos! Taltos! Make another. Make a woman, make Taltos until the sun rises!”

“No, stop this!” I cried, but this newborn horror, this baffled child, this strange wavering giant, had covered the hag of a woman and was now raping her as surely as I had done. And another hag had been brought to me and placed before me, and I was being forced down upon her, and my organ knew her, and knew what it wanted, and knew the smell.

Where were my saints?

It seemed the people in the hall were stamping and singing, chanting now with the drums. All were one voice, monotonous and low and incessant. And when I was pulled back, my eyes rolled and I could not see. The wine was splashed in my face, a child was being born to this new woman who had been given me, and once again the people cried, “Taltos, Taltos, Taltos!” And finally, “It is a woman! We have them both!”

The hall went wild with lusty cries. Once more the people were dancing but not in circles, but arm in arm and jumping up onto the boards and onto the chairs and rushing up the steps merely to jump in the air. I saw the Laird’s face, full of wrath and horror, his head shaking as he cried out to me, but his words were lost.

“Make them till Christmas morning!” cried the people. “Make them and burn them!” And as I struggled to my knees, I saw them take the firstborn, the boy who was now as tall as his father, and throw him into the Christmas fire.

“Stop it, stop this in the name of God!” No one could hear me. I could not hear myself. I could not hear him scream though I knew that he did; I saw the anguish in his smooth face. I went down on my knees and bowed my head. “God help us. It is witchcraft. Stop it, oh, God, help us, they
have
bred us for sacrifice, we
are
the lambs, oh, God, please no more, no more to die!”

The crowd was roaring, swaying, humming in the mighty and endless drone. Then suddenly screams broke the air, more loud and numerous than my own, impossible for them not to hear.

Soldiers had forced the doors! Hundreds streamed into the hall. For every man in armor with a shield and sword, there came a shepherd or a plowman with a pitchfork or a crude plowshare in his hand.

“Witches, witches, witches!” screamed the attackers.

I rose to my feet and cried out for silence. Heads were being lopped from bodies. Those who were stabbed were screaming
for mercy. Men fought to protect their women. And not even the little children were being spared.

The assailants laid hold of me. I was carried out of the hall, and with me the other monsters, newborn, and the hags from which they had come. The cold night opened up and it seemed the screams and war cries echoed off the mountains.

“Dear God, help us, help us,” I cried. “Help us, this is evil, this is wrong, this is not your justice. No. Punish those who are guilty but not all! Dear God!”

My body was flung on the stone floor of the Cathedral and I was dragged up the aisle. All around me I heard the great windows bursting. I saw flames. I began to choke on the black smoke, but my body was being scraped as I was dragged. I saw in the far distance the hay of the manger explode! The tethered animals were bellowing in the fire from which they could not escape.

And finally at the foot of the tomb of St. Ashlar I was thrown.

“Through the window, through the window!” they cried.

I struggled to my knees. All the wooden benches and ornaments of the Cathedral were burning. The whole world was smoke and the cries of the massacred, and suddenly my body was lifted by hands that held each foot and each arm, and by these beings I was swung back and forth, back and forth and then flung towards the great window of the saint himself!

I felt my chest and my face slam against the glass. I heard it break, and I thought, Surely now I will die. I will go up into the peace and into the night and into the stars, and God will explain why all this has come about.

It seemed I saw the valley. I saw the town burning. I saw every window a fiery mouth. I saw hovels blazing. I saw the bodies strewn all around me and in a daze I realized that these were not the visions of a rising soul. I still lived.

And then the mob came, and once again laid hands on me in their fury. “Drag him to the circle,” they said. “Drag all of them, burn them in the circle, burn the witches and the Taltos.”

All was blackness and panic, a gasp for breath, a desperate attempt for purchase—nothing for one moment that was not wild animal struggle, no, dear God, help us, don’t let it be the flames.

As they raised me to my feet I saw the dim ancient circle of stones surrounding us, their crude outlines looming against the sky and against the flames of the town burning behind us,
the flames engulfing the great Cathedral, all of its beautiful glass broken and gone.

A stone struck me, and then another, and another. And a third brought the blood pouring from my eye. I heard the flames. I felt the heat. But I was dying beneath the stones. One after another they struck my head, pitching me this way and that way so that I scarce felt the fire when it touched me…

“Dear God, into Thy hands, Thy servant Ashlar can do no more. Dear God. Infant Jesus, take me. Blessed Mother, take me. Francis, come to help me up. Holy Mary, Mother of God, now and at the hour…into Thy hands!”

And then…

And then.

There was no God.

There was no Baby Jesus in my arms.

There was no Blessed Mother, “now and at the hour of our death.”