by SUZAN STILL
§
Perhaps I have gone on too long or said things that are not appropriate for the ears of one so young. I must tell you, my dear Mademoiselle de Muret, that I am old now, and recounting one’s life story is a vice the elderly nourish with relish. And by your own tale of your friend Agnes, I know you have need to understand that the coupling of a man and woman may be a sweet—nay, even a sacred—thing.
All that has gone before is but a preamble to the answer you seek: Where are you and what manner of place is this? Well, my dear, you have been guided by fate to a most unique and secret place. Only one with Divine guidance might have found access to this place, as you have done.
You are, as I am sure you are aware, underground. This cave was in use long before you or I ever were born. For many hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, this cave has sheltered those who preceded us in this life. It has always had a religious function, apparently. In other rooms than this, there are paintings on the walls of extreme antiquity, showing people in the act of worship.
Egypt, as you may know, is a nation whose history is so long as to be lost in the sands of time. Always it has had a tradition of worship of a Mother Goddess, one that you might comprehend if you think of your own country’s adoration of the Madonna.
This cave was one of the places where the Goddess was worshipped for longer than human memory can recount. And it remains so today. Only those chosen by the Goddess ever find this place, and so, my child, I consider you a very blessed person indeed, as am I, for my own arrival here would never have taken place had it not been for Allia. Let me tell you how that came about.
§
I stayed with Allia for the several weeks that her people camped at Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and while I was with her, she taught me many things that were a revelation to me. Her people venerate the statue in the crypt, Saint Sarah, she who is also known as The Egyptian, as an earthly representative of their own dark-skinned Romany mother goddess, Sara-Kali.
The very site of Sarah’s church was originally a temple to the Egyptian Goddess Isis, in an earlier time, when the town was known as Ratis. The place was much beloved of Egyptian sailors who plied the Mediterranean, because its swamps were reminiscent of their own Nile Delta. So it was natural that their goddess should accompany them and be established there.
As a Christian, I was at first affronted by these notions and said so in no uncertain terms. But over the days, Allia won me over.
“Why,” she asked me, “do you find it strange to worship the Goddess? Your own religion is but twelve hundred years old. Yet we agree that God is eternal. Who do you suppose Mother Mary was, before your religion was born? Just because the names are different, do not imagine that the Goddess is different. Her earthly manifestations may change, but She is unchangeable and eternal.”
Finally, I came to see that Allia was correct. Whether we call her Isis or Aphrodite, or Mary or the Mother of God, the Divine Feminine is always there, sheltering and teaching and loving humankind. Rather than making me feel apostate, this realization gave me great comfort.
Toward the end of my stay with the gypsies, Allia again read my palm. Long she held my hand, gazing down into it, as if it were a crystal ball through which all time was fleeting. Finally, with a sigh she laid my hand upon my knee but kept hold of it, as she raised her eyes to mine and began to speak.
“You have a strange and wonderful fate, King of Nubia,” she began. “I have read many palms in my life, but never have I seen one both so powerfully star-crossed and so blessed. Many have been your misfortunes and great your suffering. However, because you have borne all this with dignity and forbearance and never have faltered in your quest, your great will and determination have altered your fate.
“Now, your torments are in the past. Now, you go forward to claim your reward. How rare an event is this! So many are called but so few endure until the end.
“Now, our time together is nearly at an end. Tomorrow, you will set forth again on your journey. But this time you will not engage in vain wanderings, for you have a destination written in your fate.”
It was then that she told me of this place, of which she is an initiate, and where her presence is familiar. For here in this cave, under the very foundations of the palaces of the Muslim overlords, is the sanctuary and holy community, consistently renewed over thousands of years, of the Great Goddess Isis.
§
Allia held me fiercely, that night, as if passing into my very body her own fire and passion. And I, for my part, clung to her, reluctant even to imagine parting from this woman whose very heat had kindled in me, again, my waning life force. Never will I forget Allia, and I present her each day to Isis as a precious gift of memory and gratitude, praying that her life will be long, prosperous and joyous.
I journeyed to Egypt by boat, beginning the very next day. And here I will live out my life, for I am old now, and also deeply contented, for my heart is healed in the presence of the Great Mother. And now I understand that you, too, belong here, but in a very different way, Blanche de Muret.
You see, over the years Allia has visited here. She comes to worship Isis, of course, but she and I are, in some strange fashion, married in our souls. She is very old now, as am I, and it is a great blessing that she has recently traveled here, probably for the final time. Mademoiselle de Muret, what I am telling you is that you will be blessed with an audience with Allia!
7
The Story of Blanche de Muret Continues
Words cannot express how vastly relieved I was to hear the King’s story! For now I knew with certainty that I was not dead and lost forever in the holds of Hell, but was fostered in a human community, however strange. During the king’s long recitation, I grew increasingly more relaxed and optimistic. Perhaps, by God’s good grace, I should live to see my homeland again, after all!
After the king’s departure from my chamber, the old doctor came to me again. Gently, but firmly, she unbound my bandages, bathed my wounds in fragrant herbal water, reanointed them with her salves, and wrapped them again in soft cotton. It was plain, even to my uneducated eyes, that my scrapes, bruises and cuts were healing at an almost miraculous rate. The old woman met my eyes when the last bandage was wrapped and smiled, wordlessly speaking the universal language of pleasure at my progress.
I slept long that day, as if some guard that I had erected, from the day Godfrey and I departed Muret for St. Denys, could finally step down from its post. Above all, my heart rested in the King’s promise to locate my dear brother, Godfrey!
The arrival and auctioning off of so many Christian children had created quite a stir all along the Nile, he told me. Therefore, he felt that it would not be too difficult to gain news of Godfrey’s whereabouts. This twin assurance, that I was not in Hell and that my brother might soon be liberated from the living damnation of slavery, released me deep into healing slumber.
I know not how long I lay thus, enslaved to exhaustion and pain. For in that sunless world into which I had fallen, day is the same as night. At last, however, the time arrived when my doctor pronounced me healed and the bandages were removed, not to be replaced.
The good king came to see me shortly thereafter. “How are you feeling, dear child?” he asked me kindly.
At last I was able to answer, in full honesty, that I was completely recovered. My energy was high, and I felt ready for any adventure he might propose.
§
Then began yet another strange episode in my already odd account. If my tale stretches the credulity of my readers, they may well imagine how it was with me who experienced these things and without foreknowledge, whatsoever. Truly, I was as one lost in a dream. For on that fateful day, I was delivered by the king into the hands of women who were priestesses of the Mother Goddess. As the women of the harem had done before them, they bathed and clothed me, but this time in preparation for an audience with Allia.
These ablutions were carried out in a deep and secret part of the cave, far
from the daily hubbub of the community’s mundane life. Back and back I was led, by winding passages dimly lit by lamps and glittering with crystals. In niches along the walls were votive figures of ancient manufacture, and even upon the walls themselves were painted devotees in the act of worship at the feet of the seated goddess.
The women who led me were of all ages and robed in the simple white linen tunics common to their kind. Their faces were calm and serene, as if nothing merely human could bother them, and this, combined with an amulet, which each wore about her neck, alone set these women aside from their brethren as a special caste.
When at last I was bathed, anointed and dressed in a fresh white tunic, I was led by the eldest of these women, with no fanfare but with great reverence, to yet another room, accessed by a passage so narrow that we must go singly and with our heads bent low. In this humble posture, we arrived in an antechamber where a single chair of gorgeous and antique fabrication sat upon a reed mat. Indicating that I should sit, the priestess bowed and departed and I was left alone.
§
I looked about me in wonder, for the room was plastered and then painted, every inch, with scenes of great vivacity. Here were hunters with spears menacing flocks of wild geese, women bending to thresh grain, and masons hewing blocks of stone. Indeed, many of the activities of human community were represented there.
When I had glanced at these scenes, I rose from my chair and examined it, for it was a wondrous thing of ebony, overlaid with sheets of gold, hammered into repoussé figures of the Goddess and her child, and inlaid with coral, carnelian and onyx.
So astonishing was the workmanship and so opulent the materials, that I was utterly charmed, and so did not hear Allia when she entered. How long she had been standing, observing me as I scrutinized the chair, I do not know. At last, with a start, I realized that I was not alone, and turned to find her by the door to the inner chamber, staring at me with detached amusement.
“You find your chair problematic, Blanche de Muret?” Her voice was low and contained a bit of a growl, as if beneath her smooth chestnut skin, a leopard might be lurking. That voice fairly gave me a chill for, although it lacked menace, yet it promised a character half-wild and practiced in uncanny things.
“Oh no, Madame!” I managed to stammer. “Quite the opposite. It is a thing of such beauty that I am scarcely fain to sit upon it.”
“Then come hither and leave it undefiled,” said she and, without further invitation or urging, she turned and disappeared through the inner door with a swirl of her long white skirt. For Allia was dressed differently than the others, her dress being of very finely woven linen reaching to her ankles. In that one turning movement, I saw the dancer that my dear King Caspar had described, and wondered what it might be like to watch her dance, fully and passionately.
I followed her into the inner room and at the doorway was arrested in astonishment. For here was a large room furnished with divans, chairs, and tables, all assembled in a way similar to that of the anteroom chair. Never in all my life before, not even in the great house of Ali Abu’l-Hasan, or in Farah’s or Fatima’s descriptions of the great Caliph’s palace, have I encountered such furnishings! They were as if wrought by the hands of a mighty magician or by the angels themselves.
§
Allia, meanwhile, had arranged herself upon a divan and waited with languid grace for me to contain my curiosity and wonder. Finally, I collected myself and took a seat on the chair that she indicated, beside her couch.
“I see you are amazed by these furnishings, which pleases me,” she began. “It shows that you have an eye for beautiful things and an appreciation for their degree of excellence. What is more, I perceive that you are entranced by their vibrational quality. For be assured, these are objects of very high energy, and anyone who is not similarly attuned would be repelled by them rather than attracted.”
Now my attention was full upon Allia, and I was again amazed. For despite my understanding, made plain by the king, that this woman was greatly advanced in age, yet she appeared ageless. Truly, I could not have guessed whether she were thirty or three hundred. Her body was slender and supple as she reclined upon her divan, and her long hair, which hung past her waist, was glossy and black. Yet her eyes, fathomless as the waters of the well from which I had been rescued, exuded the wisdom of ages.
“You must surely be wondering what has befallen you in arriving here. I have wandered the earth, and I can assure you that few other places as curious and as potent as this one exist. You have a strange fate, Blanche de Muret. It is not unlike that of the good king who has ministered to you: you are fated to lose everything and then, after long and terrible adventure, to find something of even greater value.”
She stopped speaking then and regarded me with her bottomless onyx eyes and, although I felt myself unmannered not to respond, my tongue was bound speechless in my head. I somehow understood that it was my duty to listen only. Still, my blood ran cold at her assertion that I had lost all. Had she then news of my Godfrey? I awaited her next words with trepidation.
“You have heard, I am sure, from the King of Nubia how I am gifted with second sight to an unusual degree. This is a great gift from the Holy Mother but one, I confess, that is not always easy to bear. What I see is often difficult and sometimes unspeakable. Perhaps this is the price exacted for the placement of such power within human grasp.” She stopped to arrange a fold of her skirt, fingering the fabric with a meditative air.
When again her eyes shifted to mine, they were filled with compassion. “You must be brave, Blanche de Muret. I see that, these many months, you have already displayed a courage and intelligence far beyond your years. But now you must be stronger still. For the news that I must give you will weigh down your heart to breaking. When you have heard it, your childhood will be over.”
This dire prediction was like a cold blade in my heart. I looked upon Allia with dread and would have hated her, had not her gaze been so entirely filled with loving sympathy. For already, as if by reading her thoughts, I began to suspect that I knew the import of her serious words. And with that knowledge, magically, at the same time, I felt an influx as if of warm milk, an energy that pervaded my torso and limbs with both succor and strength. Fed by it, I knew that I could withstand even the most terrible news.
I squared my shoulders and sat forward on the seat of the chair. “I am ready,” I said.
§
No words can convey the grief of those next moments in which Allia reported all that she knew. Then and thus, I learned of my parents’ deaths and the manner of them. And when this seemed too horrible to bear, Allia added to it the information hardest of all to hear: my Godfrey was dead! My poor little brother! My heart felt it must burst asunder at the news.
I howled in pain. I fell to the floor and beat my fists against it. I rolled about as if my body were encompassed in flames, screaming, “No! No! No!”
All the while knowing full well that every word Allia had spoken was true.
§
The Monastery of the Ghosts
Calypso lay awake in the darkened room with the story fading as her hunger grew. No one had brought her supper and now, in the depths of the night, her stomach growled like an angry dog. The embers of the fire had long since died into ashes, and there was no more firewood. Without a blanket, she was beginning to grow chilled. She got up and dragged the mattress closer to the fireplace, lay down again, and turned on her side to warm her back by the still-warm ashes.
The flat screen TV had finally gone off sometime in the night while she drowsed. The only light came through the small barred window that looked west, away from whatever hint of dawn the early hour might offer. A sickle moon floated in the black velvet rectangle of the window, shedding silvery light over her austere prison.
For imprisoned, she had to admit to herself, was what she was. She held out hope while talking to Lone-R, but that was before the second drugging, and before awakening in the bare, locked r
oom.
Maybe no one had come because the Ghosts were in session, deciding her fate. And Hill’s. His destiny concerned her more than her own. Was he even still alive? And then, there was Javier. She felt blunted and angry. The locket should have warned her; should tell her now what was going on. Just when she needed it most, it had gone silent.
And who was the woman Hill had seen, standing in the nonexistent opening in the tube? It was this vision, and the fresh air he gulped as it poured through a crack in the stone, that relieved his panic and saved his sanity, although Calypso was absolutely certain that no such crack existed.
She rolled to her other side and curled toward the hearth to warm her front. Every avenue of thought led her to blind alleys or mazes that turned her back upon herself. No single question had an answer—and she had dozens of questions. Her intuition told her that she needed to go deeper. Somewhere in all this, solace was lurking, if she could just hunt it out.
There were questions that she wanted to avoid, but they nibbled at the restraints with which she blocked them until she gave in. Had this all happened to her before? Was she reliving the outline of a former life? And if so, why? Had she failed to learn the lessons of the former existence? Or did certain archetypal patterns simply repeat themselves, over and over, like the cycling of the stars? She thought of the night in the courtyard with Javier and Hill, and their joking about being Sumerian shepherds naming the constellations. Maybe there was more truth than poetry in it.
She gazed out the window at the tail of the moon, already sailing serenely westward past the window frame. Then, pulling up her knees, wrapping her arms around them, she wept. Exhaustion followed tears, and as the moon voyaged silently on to set behind the western cliffs, in the blackness between moon- and dawn-light, she slept.
§
Rude thumping on the door awakened her. A long streamer of sunlight, striped with shadows from the bars, flowed from the window. The room was cold and so was she. She tried to get up, but her muscles were too rigid to respond—and besides, she was locked in anyway. She subsided on the mattress and glowered at the door, hating the intruder.