by James Reese
I walked in my new and ruined boots, soaked through, the drying mud like cake on the leather, over the uneven terrain, the gray-green slopes of stone and shrub.
I finally found myself in a sort of hollow, a sun-flooded dale. I sat beneath an olive tree, the branches fanning just overhead, and removed my boots. I lay back and listened to the silence, which ceded first to the close hum of bees and then, farther off, the whistling of an unseen shepherd and the bleating of his sheep. What a sweet lullaby it seemed.
And, nestled in a hillside hollow in Provence, on a late summer afternoon, recumbent under the shade-giving branches of an ancient olive tree, I wanted to sleep—for neither the night with Arlesienne nor the whole way south had been restful—but I could not. I did, however, lose myself, in thought if not sleep. I took to staring at one particular white rock, larger than those around it, one side of which seemed sculpted by wind, by rain, by sun, and by Time, and my thoughts soon veered off in a particular direction.
That rock reminded me of something I’d seen. A church. A church quickly visited, somewhere, as I’d made my way confusedly south. I’m almost, almost certain that it was the cathedral at Bourges that came to mind; I cannot swear to it. I was suffering a confusion of cathedrals. What I remembered then, on that hillside, the scents of thyme and rosemary released by the bruising hooves of those distant sheep, was this:
A tympanum I’d seen at a certain cathedral—I’d stood under it for some time, staring up at its arched, sculpted surface where it spread over the cathedral doors. I stood staring up as tourists and pilgrims and the everyday faithful of that city—again, I think it was Bourges; but it may have been Tours, where Madeleine startled me so—the faithful moved around me, into and out of the cathedral through three huge sets of wooden doors. I stood as still as those statues nestled into niches carved along the cathedral’s inner walls. It struck me, that particular frieze.
Yes, I’d stood staring up a long while at that sculpted work—but only days later, hillside in Provence, the next moon the new moon…only then did I understand what it was I’d seen carved into that pale stone.
What I saw—as clearly as a stain spreading over that whiteness, rising up as sure as the river water—was a tympanum as wide as the outstretched arms of five men; at its arched center it stood as tall as two men. It depicted, simply, the battle for a single soul. But in its art there lay much, much more.
In my memory there are three bands of imagery: a center strip across the whole depicts a stern Christ with outstretched arms standing in Judgment; above Him an angel band whirls about; beneath Him, in a roiling mass, writhe the faithless and demonic.
The angels were winged, with sweet human faces. The lower band of the tympanum was crowded with men and beasts of the medievalists—indeed, most of the beings depicted were horrible hybrids, contorting in the flames to which the Judge of the Quick and the Dead had recently condemned them. (The sculpture seems a thing alive to me now, not static at all.) Among the damned I could discern representatives of the “faithless” races of man: Hebrews, Cappadocians, Arabs, Indians, Phrygians, Byzantines, Armenians, Scythians, Romans…all of them in stereotypical dress, and so easily identified. (There were others I did not know, of course.) Of greater interest, though, were the carved inhabitants of the medievals’ imagined, lower worlds, their greater damnation evident in their consignment to the region beneath the faithless men, beneath the rings of flame. Here were centaurs: men to the navel, at which point they devolve into asses; Scylla, or women marked by the features of wolves, of she-bears, of dolphins; single-legged men all covered in hair; Cyclopses; Pygmies; men without mouths; headless beings with eyes on either shoulder and mouths atop their hearts; women with cows’ tails and cloven feet and lips at the tips of their breasts. But what interested me most was the middle panel, the one wherein Christ was depicted at work, in Judgment.
On either side of the standing Christ—his arms outstretched, as though He casts souls this way and that—there were ranged three angels, each holding an instrument of the Passion. It was the angel nearest Christ who held a scale, lest the dim among the Faithful not understand the scene depicted. In powdery, cloud-like plumes, undetailed, the “good” were seen ascending en masse, a single swirling soul. Others descended into tall flames. But there, there at the center of the scene, kneeling between Christ and the angel holding the scale—…yes, there knelt a girl, her hands folded contritely, as if to attest to her powerlessness. Her face was beautiful, though without expression. It was clear: she awaited Judgment. And from behind Christ’s stony robe there peered a lesser devil—horned head, hooked nose, with one hairy goat’s leg creeping forth—intent on securing the girl’s soul for Satan.
That was the moment depicted in stone: the Judgment. How much of that scene exists, in Bourges, in Tours, or elsewhere, and how much of it I imagined I cannot say. And again, as the elementals would say, that is not what matters…. What seemed to me strange—I thought so then, and I think so now—is that the soul awaiting Judgment was that of a girl, not a man, not even a woman, but a girl. A girl knelt at the center of the world’s oldest struggle. A girl like Madeleine.
There came over me then a feeling of…Well, how to describe what it was I felt as I sat suddenly upright—pricking my scalp on a branch of the olive tree—on that barren hill, hidden from the world in a hollow, the afternoon sun shafting down so golden, so pure on that great white rock? Dare I call it a revelation?
And so imagine what it was I felt that afternoon when suddenly I understood that come nightfall I was to be a player, an actor on the stage of the world, indeed in a drama that, to be simple, had only ever featured God and the Devil. I was to enter the great fray, to work the Craft among the forces of…call them what you will…. Good and Evil, Chaos and Order. I was to do this! Me!
My pulse quickened. My eyes teared. I was conscious of the smile spreading over my face. And I heard in my head Sebastiana’s words, written, in despair, at the end of her account of the Greek Supper. But I heard those words in a voice marked not by sadness, not by regret; what I heard then, in my Sister’s voice, was an affirmation, words triumphant: “We are not insignificant. Though we may be peripheral, we are not insignificant.”
Those words seemed to me a battle cry.
I ran back to that hired cab, tripping lightly over the rough terrain, boots in hand, as though I’d lived upon it all my life. I leapt rock to rock, stopping only to pick what seemed to me to be ripened olives. And oh that taste! I’d never eaten an olive off the vine before, and at first I nearly spat it out, so oily and bitter and sharp…But then the taste came around, and it seemed I…I tasted the very sun and the white rocks and the rough and low-growing herbs, redolent of salt and sea and…. Enfin, it seemed I tasted the world entire! Olives will always bring back that moment for me; they will be for me, always, the taste of joy. And it was joy I felt. Joy at knowing, at believing for the first time that I had a role in the world. Perhaps not clearly defined, not yet; and perhaps it will never be clearly defined, but I had a role to play. No one would ever tell me differently. (They will not.)…Oh yes, the world was mine, and I’d move differently through it regardless of what might happen that night under the new moon.
I snuck up on the sleeping driver, thinking should I…Yes, I should! I shouted in his ear and roughly shook his shoulder. He woke with a start to the sound of my laughter, full and unrestrained—had I ever laughed like that before? My laughter, yes, which resounded on that hill, ricocheted rock to rock, rolled over that rough landscape, overwhelming the silence, overwhelming the buzzing bees and the bleating sheep and the whistling shepherd.
It seems I hear it still, that laughter.
40
Gravedigger
THE DRIVER WAS a bit put off by me, by my having so woken him from his idyllic slumber. What did I care? I laughed full in his face. If he thought himself in the company of a lunatic, well, he would have been more right than he knew, for indeed I was crazed by the comi
ng of the moon, still some hours off. Oh yes, I was eager for the new moon to rise, eager to work the Craft beneath it at the crossroads. A lunatic, indeed!
I directed the driver to hurry back to the inn in Avignon. As he was as eager to be rid of me as I was to achieve the city, we made excellent time. The sun had begun its descent: that ancient place seemed gold-cast…no, candied: awash in butterscotch and honey; with the river and the sun and the still air conspiring to set the scene to shimmering, as if beneath a rain of grated citrus rind and crystallized sugar.
I returned to my room, taking the stairs two at a time. I thought only of the brass bell. I wanted to ring it, wanted to summon the elementals.
And so I was at first surprised and then disappointed to discover a slip of paper under that bell, just where I’d left it on the sill. The heavy sheet was folded into quarters and in the instant it took to unfold it I thought back to that page I’d received from Madeleine at Ravndal, upon which she’d pled in blood, having dipped her pen in the font of her throat, Help me.
No blood this time. The words on the paper were in black ink, and it was a script I’d not seen before, excessively cursive, ornate. It was the hand of Father Louis: I knew this instantly, before I’d read a single word or trailed the train of words to its end in search of the nonexistent signature.
The note showed a sketched map, and cursory directions. It told what I was to do in the hours of the early evening. And it directed me to the crossroads, where the elementals would meet me at midnight.
I was not happy to read what else I read. Not at all.
For the note stated plainly that I was to enter a small cemetery near the papal palace, spade in hand, and there fill two burlap bags (which I found conveniently laid across my bed) with consecrated dirt dug from the freshest grave. Mon Dieu! It’s too much! Add grave robber to the ever lengthening list of what I was. You are a man. You are a woman. You are a witch…. You are a ghoul digging dirt in the dark from atop the dead!…No, I wasn’t happy about this directive, not happy at all. But what was I to do?
The note went on: I was to pile the bags of dirt into the berlin and drive it—by myself, mind you, sans Étienne—to the crossroads, as marked on the map. Fortunately, my day’s excursion had familiarized me a bit with the land beyond Avignon, and so I had a rough idea of where I was to go. (The crossroads—I cannot give the exact location—lay beyond Les Baux, north of Arles, amid the hills of the Alpilles.) Given the unknown roads and the darkness and the great weight of the berlin, which I’d have to drive slowly over the narrow and often steep roads, I’d leave myself two hours of traveling time. That seemed sufficient. Figuring back from midnight, I calculated that I’d a great deal to do in the coming hours. Night cover was needed. And, blessedly, a dark night it would be, for a new moon—aligned as it is with the sun—shows the earth its dark side.
And so there it was: the plan. Or the first part of it. I had my objections, yes, but it seemed to me simple enough. I had some questions too, primarily: why, if we were to disinter what remained of the mortal Madeleine, did I need to harvest two bags of blessed earth? I’d have an answer in time.
I got a bowl of stew from the innkeeper’s son—no friendlier than she—and returned with it to my room. I sat eating in silence. I felt so still, so strangely still; at once eager and calm. I listened to the occasional comings and goings of my fellow travelers, even eavesdropped at my door. I paced the room, looking out my window on occasion to see people standing on the banks of the river, gauging its level. A cart went slowly by beneath my window, laden with sandbags. Children darted about like birds, excited by the occasion. For them the flood was but a welcome break in the routine of their lives.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I was tired but sleep seemed out of the question. I banged the heels of my boots against the hearth, and let the loosened mud fall into the fire. I located some playing cards and cheated terribly at solitaire. In short, I did this and that, waiting for the hour of action. And darkness. I waited for the moonrise, which finally did come to the accompaniment of my own drumming heart. I thought often of the uncertain night to come, the days to come, and then finally decided to sleep and chance the freight of dreams; certainly, the thoughts conjured by my conscious mind were none too pleasant…. But I could not sleep. I tossed and turned till the woolen blanket was twisted around me.
All through those interminable hours, attendant upon the dark, I tried without success to chase from my mind images of graves and splintered coffins and putrid flesh; images of sea travel and sickness, red weather, and the salted company of sailors—would they know what I was? Who I was? I fended off thoughts of my coming life alone in a new land, homeless, friendless, struggling to speak a language not my own. I held to the promise of seeing Sebastiana again, for wasn’t it said that a new witch had to host her Mystic Sister? Surely Sebastiana would sail behind me, someday. But this happiness faded fast as my thoughts turned to those witches I’d yet to meet, the coven I’d need to convene—would it be a band frightful enough to scare the sisters present at the Greek Supper? My thoughts grew dark as the night…. But I do not deign to catalog such thoughts, for now—with that new land but a few hours off!—they come again to taunt and tease me! It seems unwise to grant them stronger shape through description…. But in truth—then as now—such thoughts were, are, but the manifest flames of my fired excitement.
Finally, darkness. I gathered up all my things and quit the inn.
I easily found the berlin. I’d directed Étienne—who, presumably, was having his fun in Avignon: I’d not seen him since our arrival—I’d directed him to park it on the darkest and least populous street he could find. He’d left a note with the innkeeper, and she directed me to the street he named. He’d done a good job with the team, too; I found them hayed and watered, and already hitched.
Rounding the corner of the street in question, there sat the berlin. Instantly, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Impossibly, it seemed even larger and more ornate. Two old women and a young man stood beside it, shining a lantern on its gilded and painted surfaces, wiping away the obscuring mud, climbing up to look in its windows; thankfully, Étienne had drawn all the shades, as directed. And then—quite cheeky, she was!—the heavier of the two women tried the door latch, first looking this way and that. It was locked, of course. (The key—or so I hoped—lay atop the back right wheel.) How I wanted then to scare that impudent cow like a sister of yore, send some vision to her, cause the door handle to come off in her hand as a length of bone or a writhing snake…(Someday, perhaps, I’ll have greater facility with such spells.) Finally, the brazen bitch hopped thuddingly down from the runner, and the inquisitive trio tripped away. And I approached the berlin to the anxious snorts, the muffled welcome of my team.
I saw that the nécessaire was still secure, strapped to the back of the berlin. Pity someone hadn’t broken into it, relieved me of the remaining costumery I’d never wear, spare me the guilt I’d feel in ridding myself of those clothes. But then again I was fast filling the nécessaire with books, books that I would not want to lose. (Only days later, at sea, would I realize just what treasures I’d left in that nécessaire—secured only by a few worn-leather straps—there on that dark street.)
I sat in the berlin for some time, doors latched and shades drawn, but I cannot now account for a single moment of that time, tangled as I was in a skein of worries. I’d easily secured a spade, and I had the burlap bags. I’d changed into clothing suitably dark for grave robbing, or so it seemed to me; over this ensemble I wore a many-pocketed wagoner’s coat, “borrowed” off a hook at the inn.
Finally, I forced myself from the confines of the cab to steal in the direction of the small cemetery, tools in hand. I slid from shadow to shadow, avoiding the light of posted torches as well as that which issued from the windows of the homes past which I practically crawled, so fearful was I of encountering someone curious, or worse, friendly. Eventually, I reached my goal—or so said the markings on the m
ap—but there was no cemetery. No cemetery! I scanned the simple map again, and twice more. I turned it this way and that, turned myself this way and that till I was certain of my location. Yes, this is where it should be, I reasoned, but there was no cemetery! In fact, there was nothing at all. The map had led me to the side door of a dilapidated cottage, dark as pitch and seemingly abandoned; and though there may well have been bodies buried in its yard, I doubted they lay in consecrated earth.
Not knowing what to do, I wandered a bit, keeping always to the deepest shadows. Imagine my relief when I stumbled upon, literally, a low fence of wrought iron that bounded a small yard behind said house—a cemetery! Or so said the tiny sign on its gate: actually, dark as it was, and not yet daring to light a lantern, I read the sign’s raised cross with my fingers. I could not see very far into this yard. The sign said cemetery, or rather it bore a cross; but I was uncertain. It might have been a vegetable garden or a flower bed or a pitch for boules! I stepped over the low fence, cursing the priest when the wagoner’s coat snagged a jagged upright. Then I saw the telltale signs: dull white tombstones poked crookedly up from the earth at all angles, like rows of rotted teeth. The cemetery was not more than forty paces wide, twenty deep. I worried that it was not the one I’d been directed to, but then I thought, What of it? This dirt is as consecrated as any other, no? Was that not a cross on the gate? I must say that there was planted in my mind, then, a seed of thought that soon sprouted terribly: what if this was not consecrated earth, and what if, for that reason, our work at the crossroads failed? I put such worries out of mind as best I could, and I took up the silver-headed spade.