Lasher

Thirty-six

THE VALLEY WAS under siege. The main pass was closed. We came through the secret tunnel, which seemed to have grown smaller and more treacherous in this score of years. There were times when I thought it too steep, too dark, too overgrown, and that we would surely have to go back.

But very suddenly, we had come to the end-and there was the splendor of Donnelaith under its cover of Christmas snow beneath a stalwart and dying winter sun.

Thousands of the faithful had sought shelter in the valley. They had come in to flee the religious wars in the surrounding towns. It was not a multitude such as one would see in Rome or Paris. But for this lonely and beautiful country it was a great population. Haphazard shelters had been built against the walls of the little town, and against the buttresses of the Cathedral, and hovels covered the valley floor. The main pass was barricaded. A thousand fires sent their smoke into the snowy sky. Ornamented tents rose here and there as if for princely war.

The sky was darkening, the sun a flaming orange in the mountainous clouds. Lights in the Cathedral were already burning. The air was wintry, but not freezing, and the splendid windows shone through the early dark in a fierce and beautiful blaze. The waters of the loch held the last of the light jealously and we could see armed Highlanders patrolling the dimming shores.

“I would pray first,” I told my brother.

“No,” he said. “We must go up to the castle now. Ashlar, that we are not burnt out already is a miracle. This is Christmas Eve. The very night on which they have sworn to attack. There are factions within us who would be Protestant, who think that Calvin and Knox speak for the conscience. There are the old ones, the superstitious ones. Our people could break into their own war on this spot.”

“Very well,” I said, but I ached to see the Cathedral, ached to remember that first Christmas when I had gone to the crib, when I had seen the babe in the manger with the real ox and the real cow and the real donkey tethered there, amid the delicious smell of the hay and the winter greens. Ah, Christmas Eve. That meant that the Child Himself had not yet been laid in the manger. I had come in time to see it, perhaps even to lay the Infant Jesus there with my own hands. And in spite of myself, in spite of the bitter cold and the harsh darkness, I thought, This is my home.

The castle was more or less as I remembered, a great indifferent, cheerless pile of stone, as ugly surely as any edifice built by the Medici, or any I had seen on my progress through war-torn Europe. The mere sight of it filled me suddenly with fear. I turned round as I stood at the drawbridge, looking down into the valley, at the little town which was far smaller and poorer than Assisi. And all of this seemed crude and frightening suddenly-a land of shaggy gruff-spoken light-skinned persons without civilization, without anything that I could understand.

Was this pure cowardice that I felt? I wanted to be in Santa Maria del Fiori in Florence listening to the canticles or the High Mass. I wanted to be in Assisi greeting the Christmas pilgrims. For the first time in over twenty years I was not there!

As darkness fell the crowds about the little city and the church looked all the more ominous, and the woods themselves closer, as though struggling to swallow what few edifices man had made in this place.

For one second, I thought I saw a pair of dwarfish creatures, two little beings, far too ugly and misshapen to be children, and far too quick as they scurried out of the castle yard and across the bridge and beyond.

But so quick had it been, and so dark was it, that I was uncertain I’d seen anything at all.

I took one last look down into the valley. Ah, the beauty of the Cathedral. In its great Gothic ambition, it was more graceful even than the churches of Florence. Its arches challenged heaven. Its windows were visions.

This, this alone, must be saved, I thought. My eyes filled with tears.

Then I went into the castle to learn the truth.

The main hall had its roaring fire, and many in dark woolen garments gathered around the hearth.

My father rose at once from a heavily carved chair. “Leave the hall,” he told the others.

I recognized him immediately. He was mightily impressive, big-shouldered still, and somewhat resembling his own father, but far more hardy and nothing as old as the old one had been when I came. His hair was streaked with gray but still a deep lustrous brown, and his deep-set eyes were filled with a loving fire.

“Ashlar!” he said. “Thank God, you have come.” He threw his arms around me. I remembered the first moment I had ever seen him, the same look of love, from one who knew me, and my heart nearly broke. “Sit down by the fire,” he said, “and hear me out.”

Elizabeth, wretched daughter of the Boleyn, was on the throne of England, but she herself was not the worst threat to us. John Knox, the rabid Presbyterian, had come back from exile, and he was leading the people in an iconoclastic rebellion throughout the land.

“What is the madness of these people?” demanded my father, “that they would destroy statues of our Blessed Mother, that they would burn our books? We are not idolaters! Thank God we have our own Ashlar, come back to save us at this time.”

I shuddered.

“Father, we are not idolaters and I am no idol,” I declared. “I am a priest of God. What can I do in the face of war? All these years in Italy I have heard stories of atrocity. I know only how to do small things!”

“Small things! You are our destiny! We the Catholic Highlanders must have a leader to take a stand for right. At any time the Protestants and the English may build up the courage and the numbers to force the pass. They have told us if we dare to hold Midnight Mass in the Cathedral, they will storm the town. We have sheep; we have grain. If we hold through this night and the twelve days of Christmas, they may see the hand of God in it and be driven away.

“Tonight, you must lead the Procession, Ashlar, you must lead the Latin hymns. You must place the Infant Jesus in the manger, between the Virgin Mother and good St. Joseph. Lead the animals to the manger. Lead them to bow to the Good Child Jesus. Be our priest, Ashlar, what priests were meant to be. Reach to heaven for us, and call down the Mercy of God as only a priest can!”

Of course I knew this was the very concept which the Protestants found archaic, that we of the priesthood were mysterious and elevated, and that we had some communication with God which the ordinary folk did not.

“Father, I can do this as any priest can do it,” said I. “But what if we do hold through Christmas? Why will they back away then? Why will they not come down upon us at any moment that our sheep and our grain are gone?”

“Christmas is the time of their hate, Ashlar. It is the time of the richest Roman ceremony. It is the time of the finest vestments and incense and candles. It the time of our greatest Latin Mass. And old superstition grips Scotland, Ashlar. Christmas in the pagan years was the time of witches, the time that the restless dead walked. Outside this valley, they say we harbor witches, that indeed, we of Donnelaith have the witches’ gifts in our blood. They say our valley is filled with the little people who carry within them the souls of the restless dead! Papists, witchcraft-these denunciations are mixed together by men who fight to the death for the right to say that Christ is not in the bread and wine! That to pray to the Mother of God is a sin!”

“I understand.” Inwardly, I shuddered. The little people carry within them the souls of the restless dead?

“They call our saint an idol! They call us Devil worshipers! Our Christ is the Living Christ.”

“And I must strengthen the people…” I murmured. “This does not mean that I myself shall shed blood.”

“Only raise your voice for the Son of God,” said my father. “Rally the people, and silence the malcontents! For we have them among us, Puritans who would turn the tide, and even those who claim that there are witches in our very midst who must be burnt if we are to prevail. Put a silence to this squabbling. Call the entire people in the name of St. Ashlar. Say the Midnight Mass.”

“I see,” I said, “and you will tell them that I am the saint come from the window.”

“You are!” he declared. “By the love of God, you are! You know that you are. You are Ashlar who comes again. You are Ashlar who is born knowing. And you know what you are. For twenty-three years you have lived in sanctity in the arms of the Franciscans and you are a true saint. Do not be so humble, my son, that you lack courage. Cowardly priests in this valley we have already, trembling down there in the sacristy, terrified that they will be snatched from the very altar by the town’s Puritans and thrown in the Yule fire.”

At these words I remembered that long-ago Christmas. I remembered when my grandfather gave the order that I was to die. The Yule log. Would they bring it in this very night and start it to burning, after the Midnight Mass, when the Light of Christ was born into the world?

I was suddenly brought out of my thoughts. A deep sultry fragrance came to me, a thick and unnameable perfume. I smelled it so strongly that I was confused.

“You are St. Ashlar,” my father declared again as if piqued by my silence.

“Father, I don’t know,” I uttered softly.

“Ah, but you do know,” cried out a new voice. It was the voice of a woman, and as I turned around I saw a young female, my age, perhaps a little younger, and very fair, with silky long red tresses down her back and a thick and embroidered gown. It was from her that this fragrance emanated, causing a subtle change within my body, a longing and a slow fire.

I was struck by her beauty, by her rippling hair and her eyes so like those of our father, deep-set and bright. My eyes were black. My mother’s eyes. I remembered the Dutchman’s phrase-a pure female of your own ilk. But she was not this. I knew it. She was a human woman. I could see that she more resembled my father than me. When I saw my like I would know it, just as I have always known certain things.

This woman came towards me. The fragrance was inviting to me. I had no idea what to make of it; I seemed to feel hunger, thirst and passion all at the same time.

“Brother, you are no St. Ashlar!” she said. “You are the Taltos! The curse of this valley since the dark times, the curse that rises without warning in our blood.”

“Silence, bitch,” my father said. “I mean it! I will kill you and your followers with my own hands.”

“Aye, like the good Protestants of Rome,” she said, mocking him, her voice very clear and ringing as she lifted her chin and pointed her hand. “What is it they say in Italy, Ashlar? Do you know? ‘If our own father were a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him’? Do I quote it right?”

“I think so, Sister,” I said softly, “but for God’s sake, be wise. Speak to me in patience.”

“Patience! Were you born knowing? Or is that a lie too? In the arms of a queen, was it not? And for you, she lost her head.”

“Silence, Emaleth,” cried my father. “I am not afraid of you.”

“You are the only one then, Father. Brother, look at me, listen to what I say.”

“I don’t know what you are saying, I don’t understand this. My mother was a great queen. I never knew her name.” I stuttered as I said this, for I had long ago guessed who she might have been, and this was stupid for me to pretend not to know, and this woman knew it. She was clever and she saw past my gentle Franciscan manner and the startled look of innocence on my face.

In an ugly dim flash, I remembered my mother’s loathing, the touch of my mouth on her nipple. I brought my hands up to my face. Why had I come back to learn these truths? Why had I not stayed in Italy? Oh, fool! What had I thought an ugly truth could do?

“It was the Boleyn,” said the woman, Emaleth, my sister. “Queen Anne was your mother, and for witchcraft and for making monsters she was put to death.”

I shook my head. I saw only that poor frightened woman, screaming for me to be taken away. “The Boleyn,” I whispered. And all the old tales came back of me of the martyrs of those times-the Carthusians and all the priests who would not ratify the evil marriage of the King to the Boleyn.

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:

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear…

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

Rejoice

Rejoice

Emmanuel

Shall come to thee

O Israel!

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.

“Father,” I said my prayer, “if I die this night, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

It was nearly midnight, but still too soon to go out, and as I stood there, deep in prayer, seeking to fortify myself, calling on Francis to give me courage, I looked up and saw that my sister had come to the door of the sacristy, in a dark green hood and cloak, and was motioning for me with one thin white hand, to come into the adjacent room.

This was a dark-paneled chamber, with heavy oak furnishings, and shelves of books built into the walls. A place for a priest to hold conferences in quiet, perhaps, or a study. Not a room I had seen before. I saw Latin texts which I knew; I saw the statue of our founder, St. Francis, and my heart was filled with happiness, though no plaster or marble Francis had ever been the radiant being I saw in my mind’s eye.

My soul was quiet. I didn’t want to talk to my sister. I wanted only to pray. The scent made me restless.

She led me inside. Several candles burnt along the wall. Nothing was visible through the tiny diamond-paned windows except the snow falling, and I was stunned to see the Dutchman from Amsterdam seated at the table and motioning for me to sit down. He had taken off his clumsy Dutch hat, and looked at me eagerly as I took the opposite chair.

The strange enticing scent came strongly from my sister, and once again it made me hunger for something, but I did not know for what. If it was an erotic hunger, I did not intend to find out.

I was fully dressed for High Mass. I seated myself carefully and folded my hands on the table.

“What is it you want?” I looked from my sister to the Dutchman. “Do you come to go to confession so that you can receive the Body and Blood of Christ tonight?”

“Save yourself,” said my sister. “Leave now.”

“And forsake these good people and this cause? You are mad.”

“Listen to me, Ashlar,” said the man from Amsterdam. “I’m offering you my protection again. I can take you from the valley tonight, secretly. Let the cowardly priests here gather their courage on their own.”

“Into a Protestant country? For what?”

It was my sister who answered: “Ashlar, in the dim days of legends before the Romans and the Picts came to this land, your breed lived on an island, naked and mad as apes of the wild-born knowing, yes, but knowing at birth all that they would ever know!

“At first the Romans sought to breed with them, as had others. For if they could father sons who grew to manhood within hours, what a powerful people they would become. But they could not breed the Taltos, save once in a thousand times. And as the women died from the seed of the Taltos males, and the Taltos females led the men to endless and fruitless licentiousness, it was decided that they must wipe the Taltos from the earth.

“But in the islands and in the Highlands, the breed survived, for it could multiply like rats. And finally when the Christian faith was brought to this country, when the Irish monks came in the name of St. Patrick, it was Ashlar the leader of the Taltos who knelt to the image of the Crucified Christ and declared that all his kind should be murdered, for they had no souls! There was a reason behind it, Ashlar! For he knew that if the Taltos really learnt the ways of civilization, in their childishness, and idiocy, and penchant to breed, they could never be stopped.

“Ashlar was no longer of his people. He was of the Christians. He had been to Rome. He had spoken to Gregory the Great.

“So he condemned his fellow Taltos! He turned on them. The people made it a ritual, an offering, as cruel a pagan slaughter as ever was known.

“But down through the years, in the blood, the seed travels, to throw up these slender giants, born knowing, these strange creatures whom God has given the cleverness of mimicry, and singing, but no true capacity to be serious or firm.”

“Oh, but that is not so,” I said. “Before God, I am the living proof.”

“No,” said my sister, “you are a good follower of St. Francis, a mendicant and a saint, because you are a simpleton, a fool. That’s all St. Francis ever was-God’s idiot, walking about barefoot preaching goodness, not knowing a word of theology really, and having his followers give away all they possessed. It was the perfect place to send you-the Italy of the Franciscans. You have the addled brain of the Taltos, who would play and sing and dance the livelong day and breed others for playing and singing and dancing…”

“I am a celibate,” I said. “I am consecrated to God. I know nothing of such things.” I was cut so deep it was a miracle the words would come from me. I was wounded. “I am not such a creature. How dare you?” I whispered, but then I bowed my head in humility. “Francis, help me now,” I prayed.

“I know this whole story,” declared the Dutchman, as my sister nodded. He went on. “We are an Order called the Talamasca. We know the Taltos. We always have. Our founder beheld with his own eyes the Taltos of his time. It was his great dream to bring the male Taltos together with the female Taltos, or with the witch whose blood was strong enough to take the male’s seed. That has been our purpose for centuries, to watch, to wait, and to rescue the Taltos! — to rescue a male and a female in one generation if such a thing does occur! Ashlar, we know where there is a female! Do you understand?”

I could see this startled my sister. She had not known it, and now she looked at the Dutchman with suspicion, but he went on, urgently, as before.

“Have you a soul, Father?” he whispered to me, changing his manner now to a more wily one, “and a wit to know what it means? A pure female Taltos? And a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and to talk on the first day! Children who can so quickly beget other children?”

“Oh, what a fool you are,” I said. “You come like the fiend to tempt Christ in the desert. You say to me, ‘I would make you the ruler of the world.’ ”

“Yes, I say that! And I am prepared to assist you, to bring back your breed in full force and power again.”

“And if you do think me this witless monster! Why would you so generously do this for me?”

“Brother, go with him,” said my sister. “I don’t know if this female exists. I have never beheld a female Taltos. But they are born, that’s true. If you don’t go, you will die tonight. You have heard tell of the little people. Do you know what they are?”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to say, I do not care.

“They are the spawn of the witch that fails to grow into the Taltos. They carry the souls of the damned.”

“The damned are in hell,” I replied.

“You know this isn’t so. The damned return in many forms. The dead can be restless, greedy, filled with vengeance. The little people dance and couple, drawing out the Christian men and women who would be witches, who would dance and fornicate, hoping for the blood to come together, for like to find like, and that the Taltos will be born.

“That is witchcraft, Brother. That is what it has always been-bring together the drunken women, so that they will risk death to make the Taltos. That is the old story of the revels in these dark glens. It is to make a race of giants who will, by sheer numbers, drive other mortals from the earth.”

“God would not let such a thing happen,” I said calmly.

“Neither will the people of the valley!” said the Dutchman. “Don’t you understand? Throughout the centuries they have waited and watched and used the Taltos. It is good luck to them to bring together male and female, but only for their own cruel rituals!”

“I don’t know what you are saying. I am not this thing.”

“In my house in Amsterdam there are a thousand books which will tell you of your kind and other miraculous beings; there is all the knowledge we have gathered as we have waited. If you are not the simpleton, then come.”

“And what are you?” I demanded. “The alchemist who would make a great homunculus?”

My sister put down her head on the table and wept.

“In my childhood I heard the legends,” she said bitterly, wiping at her tears with her long fingers. “I prayed the Taltos would never come. No man shall ever touch me lest such a creature would be born to me! And if such were to happen, God forbid, I should strangle it before it ever drank the witch’s milk from my breasts. But you, Brother, you were allowed to live, you drank your fill of the witch’s milk and grew tall. Yet you were sent away to be saved. And now you have come home to fulfill the worst prophecies. Don’t you see? The witches may be spreading the word now. The vengeful little people will learn that you are here. The Protestants surround this valley. They are waiting for the chance to come down upon us, waiting for the spark to light their fire.”

“These are lies. Lies to put out the Light of Christ which would come into the world on this night. You hear the bells. I go now to say the Mass. Sister, don’t come to the altar with your pagan superstition. I will not put the Body of Christ on your tongue.”

As I rose to go, the Dutchman laid hold of me, and with all my strength I forced him back.

“I am a priest of God,” I said, “a follower of St. Francis of Assisi, I have come to say the Christmas Mass in this valley. I am Ashlar, and I stand on the right hand of God.”

Without stopping I went to the Cathedral doors. Great cheers sounded from the multitude as I opened the church. My head was swimming with their disconnected phrases, threats, suspicions-that it was all demonology, of that, I was sure.

I went out amongst the townspeople, raising my hand in blessing. In Nomine Patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti, amen. A beautiful young girl had come forward to be the Blessed Virgin Mary in our pageant, her hair covered by a blue veil, and a rosy-cheeked boy to be Joseph, who had only just got his beard and had to darken it with coal; and then an infant, born only a few days ago, tiny and pink and beautiful, was placed in my arms.

I saw the men in their animal skins gathering, lighted candles in their hands. Indeed the entire valley was ablaze with lighted candles. All the town was filled with lighted candles! And the great beautiful church behind us would soon receive this light.

For a split second again, I did see one of those small beings, humpbacked, heavily clothed, but it seemed no monster-only the common dwarfs one saw in the streets of Florence, or so I told myself again. And it was natural for the people to give it wide berth and to gasp as it fled, for such things frequently frighten the ignorant. They cannot be blamed.

The bell began to chime the hour of midnight. It was Christmas. Christ had come. The bagpipers came into the church, in their full tartan skirts; the little children came in their white, as angels, and all the people, rich, poor, ragged or well dressed, crowded through the doors.

Our voices rose again in the anthem: “Christ is born. Christ is born.” Once more I heard the tambourines and the pipes playing, and the beat of the drums. The rhythm caught me and made my vision blur, but I walked on, my eyes upon the radiant altar and the manger of hay which had been made to the right of it before the marble Communion rail. The infant in my arms gave strong little cries as if it too would announce the glad tidings, and kicked its sturdy beautiful little legs as I held it high.

I had never been such a child. I had never been such a miracle. I was something ancient and forgotten perhaps and worshiped in the time of darkness. But that did not matter now. Surely God saw me! Surely God knew my love for Him, my love for His people, my love for the Child Jesus born in Bethlehem, and all who would speak His name. Surely St. Francis looked down on me, his faithful follower, his child.

At last I had reached the broad sanctuary, and I went down in genuflection and laid the little infant in the bed of hay. Linen had been prepared for it. It cried very hard to be so abandoned, poor little Christ! And my eyes filled with tears to behold its common perfection, its ordinary symmetry, the natural brilliance of its eyes and voice.

I stepped back. The Virgin Mary had knelt beside the little miracle. And to the right of the small crib knelt her young St. Joseph, and shepherds came now, our own shepherds of Donnelaith with their warm sheep over their shoulders, and the cow and ox were led to the manger. The singing grew louder and ever more beautiful and blended, with the drums beneath it, and the pipes. I stood there swaying. My eyes misted. I realized in my sadness, as I sank deep into the music, almost irretrievably into it, that I had not seen my saint. I had not thought to glance at the window when I came down the center aisle. But it did not matter. He was nothing but glass and history.

I would now make the Living Christ. My altar boys were ready. I walked to the foot of the steps, and began the ancient words in Latin.

I will go in to the Altar of God.

At the Consecration, as the tiny bells rang out to mark the sacred moment, I held up the Host. This is My Body. I grasped the chalice. This is My Blood. I ate the Body. I drank the Blood.

And finally I turned to give out the Holy Communion, to see them streaming towards me, young and old and feeble and hardy and those with babes who held down the little babies’ heads as they themselves opened their mouths to receive the sacred Host.

High above, amid the narrow soaring arches of this vast building, the shadows hovered, but the light rose, blessed and bright, seeking every corner to illuminate it, seeking every bit of cold stone to make it warm.

The Laird himself, my father, came to receive Communion, and with him my fearful sister, Emaleth, who bowed her head at the last second so none would see that I did not give her the Host. And uncles whom I knew from long ago, and kinswomen, yes, and the chieftains of the other strongholds and their clans. And then the farmers of the valley and the shepherds, and the merchants of the town-a never-ending stream.

It seemed an hour or more that we gave Communion, that back and forth we went for cup after cup, until at last all the men and women of the valley had partaken. All had received the Living Christ into their hearts.

Never in any church in Italy had I known such happiness. Never in any open field under God’s arching sky, beneath His perfectly painted stars. When I turned to say the final words: “Go, the Mass is ended!” I saw the courage and happiness and peace on every face.

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.”

There was no Light.

There was no judgment.

There was no heaven.

There was no hell.

…

There was darkness.

…

And then came Suzanne.

Suzanne calling in the night.

Ashlar, St. Ashlar.

A bright fleshly being, scarcely visible in the circle! And look at it, the ring of stones, how round! Hear her voice!

And down the long long years the call came, feeble and tiny, like the faintest spark, and then louder and clearer, and I came together to hear it:

“Come now, my Lasher, hear my voice.”

“Who am I, child?” Was this my voice speaking? Was this my own true voice speaking at last?

No time, no past, no future, no memory…

Only a dim vision of warm flesh through the mist, a blurred entity reaching upwards from the circle.

And her childlike answer, her laughter, her love:

“My Lasher, that’s who you are, you are my avenger, my Lasher, come!”