by Anne Rice
“We are of the Highlands; we are the Christians of St. Columba and St. Patrick, we are of the old Irish church, and we will not yield to this pompous King in Windsor Castle who shakes his fist in the face of God, or to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his lackey, let both of them be damned. Let all Englishmen be damned. They are burning the priests. So they make martyrs. You will understand all in time.”
These words brought a peace to me, but I could not claim that I knew the name Columba or Patrick, and when I tried again to recollect all I knew it seemed that my inborn knowledge had become smaller even as we had traveled north. Had I known things in my mother’s arms which I had forgotten? Had I known things in her womb? I could not chase these receding phantoms with any success. They were gone from me, leaving only a shimmer.
I am born. I am flesh! I was living and breathing again. The darkness is dispelled and even this soft snow surrounding me is part of the living world, and look! The sky above, a blue no painter could capture, and then the deep glen spreading out before us, as we came out of the mountains-look, the great church.
The snow fell in small soft flakes around us. I was so used to being cold I had forgotten to dislike it. I was charmed by what I saw.
“Wrap the wool around you,” said my father. “We are going into the castle, that is our home.”
I didn’t want to follow the path up to the castle. Rather I wanted to go down into the town. It was a great town then, you cannot imagine. It had nothing to do with the small pathetic village that grew up on its ruins later on. It had its walls, its battlements, and within were its citizens and its merchants, its bankers, and its great Cathedral! And all around lived the farmers, said my father, on rich land which, though it was now covered with snow, gave good harvests, and provided for fat and healthy sheep.
Beyond in the hills, here and there, and there, where he pointed, were other strongholds, in which lesser chieftains loyal to Donnelaith lived under our protection and in peace.
Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys pressed within the battlements and from the towers scattered and barely visible in the high woods. The air was thick with delicious smells of food cooking.
And there rising out of the center of the town stood the massive Cathedral, quite visible beyond the houses and the walls, the snow sliding from its steep Gothic steeples and peaked roof, and light blazing inside it so that its great windows were filled with myriad colors and enchanting designs. I could see, even at this late hour, hundreds moving in and out of the Cathedral doors.
“Father, please let me go there!” I begged. I was drawn to this place as if I knew it, yet I did not. I hungered for the discovery of it.
“No, my son, you come with me.”
We had to go to the castle, high above the loch, which was our home.
Down below, the water was covered with ice, but in the spring, said my father, the merchants would come by the hundreds, and so would the salmon fishermen, and the banks would be full of traders, and men would come to trade linen for the wool and skins and fish which we had to sell.
This castle was a series of round towers, no more beautiful than the ominous heap of stone in which I’d been born. Once inside, I perceived it was less luxurious, but nevertheless filled with a bustling life.
The great hall itself might have been a mountain cave, so crude were its adornments-its few grand arches, its staircase-but it was all decorated for a great banquet, and the fairies of the wood could not have created a scene of greater warmth or charm.
The floor itself was entirely covered in green. And great garlands trimmed the sides of the stairway, and were placed above those arches deep enough to hold them, and placed all about the huge hearth. Indeed green branches of the Scots pine were everywhere laid, fragrant and beautiful, and mistletoe and ivy were likewise used in decorations, and I knew these lovely evergreens. I knew their names.
I saw the splendor with which the woods had been brought indoors. Candles by the dozens blazed along the walls, and down the length of the banquet table, and benches were being brought up for those who would dine.
“Sit down at the table,” said Father, “and keep quiet, whatever you do.”
It seemed that we had arrived at the very moment of the banquet, which was only one of the twelve banquets of Christmas, and the entire kindred was gathering for the feast. No sooner were we seated at a bench at the far end, than in came the ladies and men in gorgeous attire.
This attire did not match the clothes given me at the London court, but it was nevertheless very fine, and many of the men wore Highland dress of belted plaid. The ladies had the same fine headdresses as those worn in the King’s castle, though their sleeves and skirts were simpler, but nevertheless brightly colored, and there were many who wore jewels.
I was dazzled by the jewels. It seemed to me that in the jewels, all the color and light I beheld around me was concentrated, as if it had been drawn into the bits of glass by magnetism. In sum, were I to drop a ruby in a glass of water, I thought it would sparkle and glow, and that the water would turn bright and red.
My mind was delighting in this sort of mad perceptual error. I beheld that in the fireplace there lay a log so big it seemed an entire tree. Indeed, one could see its various branches still, burnt off at the ends like limbs from which the hands had been cut. It was blazing away furiously and my father gave me to know in a whisper that that was the Yule log, and that his brothers had dragged it out of the woods and into the great hall.
It would burn the full twelve days of Christmas.
And now as dozens of people took their places on either side of the long table, there came the Laird himself down the stairs, my father’s father, Douglas the Great Earl of Donnelaith.
He was a white-haired man with close-set very red cheeks, and a full white beard, and he wore his tartan or plaid with a great flourish, and had with him three beautiful women who were his daughters, my aunts.
My father cautioned me again to be quiet. I was attracting some notice. People were wondering, “Who is the tall young man?” By this time my beard and mustache had grown out full and dark brown, and I could not, on account of my skin, be taken for a tall child. My hair had grown long as well.
I watched with wonder as all the guests were finally seated, and as the great choir of monks took their position upon the stone stairs-all tonsured men, which meant they had only a ring of hair left to them, above the ears, and in white robes. They began their singing, gleeful yet mournful and beautiful. And I would say this music struck me with such force that I was truly intoxicated, that is, shot by the arrow of it, and unable for a long moment to breathe.
I knew what was happening around me. The great roasted boar’s head had been brought in, surrounded by greenery and gold and silver decorations and candles, and wooden apples painted to look real.
And the boars for eating were borne in by boys who carried them on the very spits on which they’d been cooked, and now set them down upon side tables and began to cut the steaming meat.
I saw all this, I heard it. But my mind was swept with the mournful music of the monks. A lovely Gaelic carol rising softly from some twenty or thirty gentle mouths:
What child is this who laid to rest In Mary’s arms is sleeping…
You know the air, it is as old as Christmas in Ireland or Scotland itself. And if you remember its melody, then you can perhaps grasp a little of what this was to me, this moment, when my heart sang with the monks on the stairs, and the room became subordinated to the song.
It seemed I remembered then the bliss I had known inside my mother. Or was it from some other time? I do not know, except that the feeling was so fully and deeply felt that it could not have been new. It was not frenzied excitement. It was a pure joy. I recalled dancing, my hands outstretched in memory to clasp the hands of others. And yet this moment seemed precious and expensive, as though it had cost me much once long ago.
The music stopped as it had begun. Wine was given to the monks. They left
as they had come. The hubbub rose all around me; gay voices.
But now the Laird had risen, raised the toast. The wine was being poured. And all commenced to eat. From the great wheels of cheese, my father chose pieces for me and cautioned me to eat them as if I were a man. He sent for milk for me, and no one among the busy company took notice and there was much talking and laughing, and even some wild wrestling among the younger men.
But I could see that as the time passed, more and more of them took notice of me, enough to glance my way and whisper to the next person, or even to point, or to lean forward and ask my father, “But who is this you’ve brought with you to dine with us?”
It seemed that some eruption of chatter or merry laughter always prevented him from having to answer. He ate his meat without enthusiasm. He looked about anxiously, and then suddenly my father sprang to his feet. He raised his cup. I could scarce make out his profile or his eyes, for all his long straggled brown hair and beard, but I heard his voice declare, loud, and ringing, and overriding everything:
“To my beloved father, to my mother, to my elders and to my kindred, I present this boy-Ashlar, my son!”
It seemed a cheer rose from the company, a great awful roar, only to be strangled suddenly into rigid silence beneath a volley of whispers and gasps. All the company went still, eyes fixed upon my father and upon me. He reached down, groping as it were with his right hand, and I rose as he obviously wished me to do, standing taller than he, though he was as tall as the other men.
Again, gasps and whispers came from the company. One of the women gave a scream. The Laird himself peered up from beneath his thick gray eyebrows with sparkling blue eyes that held me in a deadly glance. I looked around me in fear.
Now it seemed the monks, who had only been in the vestibule, once again appeared. One or two came forward to stare at me. They looked remarkable to me, these shining bald creatures all in long dresses like women, but as more and more of them came forward, the entire gathering became ever more alarmed.
“He is my son!” declared my father. “My son, I tell you! He is Ashlar, come again!”
And this time many women screamed, and some of them fell back as if fainting; the men rose from their benches, and the old Laird rose, bringing down both fists upon the boards so that cups and knives were shaken to the right and to the left. Wine splashed. Plates clattered.
Then, in spite of his age, the old Laird leapt upward onto the bench.
“Taltos!” he said in a low and vicious whisper, leering at me with lowered head.
Taltos. I knew this word. This was the word for me.
I would have run then, instinctively, if my father hadn’t held tight to my hand, forcing me to stand firm with him. Others were leaving the hall. A number of the women were ushered out by their anxious attendants, including some of the very old, who were quite confused.
“No!” my father declared. “St. Ashlar. Come again! Speak to them, my son. Tell them it is a sign from heaven.”
“But what shall I say, Father?” I asked. And at the clear sound of my voice, which seemed to me in no way remarkable, the whole company went mad. People were rushing through the various doorways. The Laird now stood on the trestle table, fists clenched, kicking out of his way the laden plates. The servants had surely all taken cover. All the women were gone.
Finally only two of the monks remained. One stood before me, tall but not as tall as I, and red-haired and with soft green eyes. He smiled upon me in that moment, and his smile was like the sound of the music, utterly quieting, and I felt a sinking in my soul.
I knew the others loathed the sight of me! I knew they had run from me. I knew the panic was the same as I had seen among the women of my mother, and in my mother herself.
I was trying to understand it, to know what it meant. I said, “Taltos,” as if this would trigger some revelation stored within me, but no more came.
“Taltos,” said the priest-for that is what he was, though I did not then know it, a priest and a Franciscan-and again he gave me this great and gentle smile.
All had fled the hall now but my father, myself, the priest and the Laird, who stood upon the table, and three men crouched by the fireplace, as if in waiting, though for what I couldn’t guess.
It frightened me to see them, and the anxious way in which they looked to the Laird and the Laird looked down on me.
“It is Ashlar!” cried my father. “Do you not see with your own eyes! What must God do to claim your attention? Destroy the tower with lightning? Father, it is he!”
I realized that I had begun to tremble, a most amazing sensation, which I had never felt before. I had not even shivered in the cold of the winter. But I could not control this trembling. Indeed, it must have looked as though I were standing upon a piece of earth that was shaking, so violent was it, though I managed to remain on my feet.
The priest drew close to me; his green eyes very much reminded me of jewels, except that they were obviously made of something soft. He reached out and stroked my hair gently, almost tenderly, and then my cheek and my beard.
“It is Ashlar!” he whispered.
“It is the Taltos, it is the Devil!” declared the Laird. “Heave him into the fire.”
The three at the hearth came forward, but my father stood in front of me, and so did the priest. Ah, yes, you can imagine it, you can well picture it, can’t you? One screaming for my destruction as if he were Michael the Archangel, and the gentler ones not letting such a thing happen.
And I-gazing at the fire in terror, barely aware that it could consume me, that I would suffer unspeakable pain if I were thrown into it, that I would be alive no more. It seemed in my ears I heard the cries of thousands suffering, dying. But as my fear crested, the memory became nothing but the violent quavering of my body, the tensing of my hands.
The priest enfolded me in his arms and went to lead me from the hall. “You will not destroy what God has done.”
I almost wept at his touch, his warm arms guiding me.
I was then led out of the castle by the priest and by my father, and the Laird, who came with us, eyeing me with great suspicion, and over to the Cathedral we went. The snow still fell lightly, people everywhere passed us, mounded with wool and furs. It was almost impossible to make out who was a man, who was a woman, so covered up were they, and so hunkered over against the cold. Some of them were smallish, rather like children, but I could see their faces were old and gnarled.
The Cathedral was open and filled with lights, and the people were singing, and as we drew close I saw that the same greenery had been strewn all about the great arched doors. The singing was swelling and beautiful beyond belief. The smell of the green pine woods filled the air. Delicious smoke wafted on the wind.
And the noisy song inside was jubilant and merry, something much more festive and discordant and triumphant than the song of the monks had been. There was not a steady rhythm to it which caught me, but rather a general elation. It made the tears come to my eyes.
We fell into line with those entering the church and proceeded slowly, thank God, for I could not keep my balance on account of the song. The Laird, who had thrown his wool cape up over his face, my father, who had never shed his fur garments, and the priest, who had raised his cowl against the cold-these three supported me, astonished by my weakness, yet easily helping me a step at a time.
The informal stream of pilgrims moved sluggishly into the giant nave, and even with the music distracting me I was overcome with wonder at the sheer size and depth of the church. For nothing I had seen so far could equal this structure in grace and in height. Its windows seemed impossibly tall and narrow and its branching arches above to have been made by gods. At the far end, high above the altar, was a window shaped like a flower. It really did occur to my newborn mind that people could not have done it. And then I became overawed and confused.
At last, as we drew closer to the altar, I saw what lay ahead. A great stable full of hay, and there a cow lowi
ng, and an ox, and a sheep. These animals were restless on their tethers and the warm steaming smell of their excrement rose from the floor of hay. Before them stood a man and a woman made entirely from lifeless stone. Indeed, they were symbols only. Their eyes were painted and so was their hair. And between them, in a tiny bed, lay an infant human child, of marble, same as the man and the woman, only the child was chubby and more shiny, with smiling lips and eyes made of shining glass.
This was a marvel to me, for I have already told you how the priest’s eyes made me think of jewels, and now I beheld the artificial eyes of this baby, and the connection confused me and held me in thrall.
The music infused these thoughts; indeed it made all thought seem dreamlike and slow, and uncertain, but then in a deep sad moment I knew the truth:
I knew completely that I had never been such a newborn infant as this; that all of these people had been infants; that it was my size and my articulation which had terrified my mother. I was a monster. I felt this completely, perhaps remembering the things the panic-stricken women had cried at my birth. I knew. I knew I was not one of the human race.
The priest told me to go down on my knees and kiss the child, that this was the Christ who had died for our sins. And then he pointed to the bloody crucifix hanging from the high column to the right. I saw the man there, saw the blood streaming from His hands and feet. The crucifix Christ. The God of the Wood. Jack of the Green. These words went through my mind. And I knew the infant and the Christ on the Cross were one. Again, I heard those distant cries in my memory, as if of a massacre.
The music brought it all together. I did truly feel that I would soon faint. Perhaps then the veil came close to falling, and I might have reached through and known the past. Ah, but other, more painful moments would follow, with greater cooperation from me, and nothing much was ever revealed.