by Anne Rice
I remembered the words of the Franciscan in Donnelaith. “You must never touch the flesh of a woman.” I thought about this a great deal. Of course I’d come to realize that coupling led men and women to create children. And I concluded that I had been given this severe warning for one reason: so that I would not father another monster like myself.
But what sort of monster was I? I wasn’t sure anymore. My birth and origins became a torture to me in memory, a disgrace that I could not confide to a soul.
At this time too-during those first few years, as my personality formed-I began to think that certain persons were watching me, persons who knew about my imposture and would someday reveal me for what I was.
Often in the streets of Florence I saw Dutchmen, recognizable by their distinctive clothing and hats, and these men seemed always to have their eyes fixed on me. And then once an Englishman came to Assisi and stayed there a long time and came back day after day, simply to hear me preach. This was the beautiful springtime. I was telling the stories or exempla of St. Francis; and I remember the cold eyes of this man gazing upon me as I spoke.
Always I confronted these spies. I would stare at them. Sometimes I would even turn and start to walk towards them. Always they fled. Always they returned.
Meantime the question of chastity was torturing me-the question of whether or not I could do it with a woman, and whether or not a monster would be born.
There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do what was right in the eyes of God. It seemed a very simple matter to take a mistress, to take a lover. It seemed an immense challenge to enjoy no pleasure of the flesh at all. To live without knowing the answer to the mystery.
I chose the path of the saint.
I allowed no fire to kindle in me, and consequently there was never a blaze.
I became well known for my purity, that I had no eye for women whatsoever, and my healing became more and more accomplished, though still I did not know if it was miraculous and thought it was perhaps a matter of skill.
Another passion meantime swept me up. It was the simple idea current at the time that singing could bring the faithful to Christ, as easily perhaps as evangelical preaching. I began to write my own canticles, simple poetry which I made up, using much rhythm, and to sing these songs at informal gatherings. I much preferred singing to preaching. I was tired of hearing myself promulgate simple truths. But I never got tired of singing.
Soon people knew that when I appeared, there would be music from me-a brief song, sometimes little more than a poem recited to the stmmming of a small lute. And I played a little game of which no one else was aware-I tried to see how many days I could go with no speaking, only singing, without irritating anyone or attracting notice to my little sport.
Ten years after my arrival in Italy I was ordained. It would have come sooner if I had wanted it but my study for Holy Orders was deliberately meticulous and slow. I was all the time traveling, walking the roads, and meeting with people and greeting them with the word of God. Time did not seem important. In fact, I had no sense of hurrying towards any destiny at all.
I had become by my ordination utterly fearless of disease. I sang to those who were past all need of physical comfort. I sat in many a room where others feared to step.
But things were not perfect. They were not right. From time to time I remembered my birth with startling effect. I’d wake, sit up, think, Ah, but it’s not possible, and then lie back in the darkness, realizing of course it was possible, for I had no other mother, father, sister, brothers! I was not what others believed me to be. I would remember the Queen and the river and the Highlands, as if they were elements of a nightmare.
And sometimes it seemed that after these tumultuous moments, I would see those people following me, spying upon me more than before. Of course I faulted myself for imagining it, but the longer I thought of all this, the more strange my life became.
Then there were times when I betrayed my nature in a particular and spontaneous way. I loved the taste of milk. The Devil was always tempting me with visions of women’s breasts. Even during Lent I had to have milk, and I could not endure the fast, and the breaking of the fast for milk was my worst sin. I sometimes grasped handfuls of cheese and ate it. Any soft food was delicious to me, but the craving for cheese and milk was especially bad.
Once I wandered into a field filled with cattle. It was sunrise and no one was about. Or so I thought. I went down on my knees and drank from the udder of a cow, squirting the warm milk out of the udder right into my mouth.
When I had drunk enough I lay in the grass, staring at the sky. I felt bestial and ugly for what I had done. An old farmer came. He was in worn clothing, though neat and well mended, and his face was darkened from working in the sun.
He whispered something to me, full of fear, and ran away. I got up and ran after him, lifting my robes so that I wouldn’t trip.
“What did you say to me?” I asked him.
He then whispered something hostile, a curse perhaps, and fled away.
I was overcome with shame. This man knew I wasn’t a human being. And gradually from that day forward my deceit of those around me began to prey on my mind.
I saw the farmer again in the city. He saw me. I could have sworn I saw him with others, and that they were whispering, but this might have been fancy. I let it go. Then one morning I came out of my cell in the cloister to discover a great pitcher of fresh milk there. This froze my soul. For a moment I did not know where I was, or who, or what was happening. I knew only this was an offering, and that it had happened before and before and before. The glen, the little people, and one single giant among them walking down to the edge of the circle, and the offerings of milk. My head swam. For the first time in many many years, I saw the circle of stones, and the circles of figures, so many circles of figures, each wider than the other, and going on so far that I lost count.
I picked up the pitcher and I drank it down greedily the way I always did milk. When I looked up, across the monastery garden, I saw, in the shadows of the cloister, people moving who then darted away.
I think some of the monks saw this. I didn’t know what to think of it. I didn’t dare tell anyone about it. I dismissed it. I told St. Francis, I was his instrument, and I cared only for serving God.
That night for sure a Dutchman was following me. And in the morning I went back to Assisi, to talk to Francis, to renew my vows, to cleanse my soul.
In the days that followed, many people came to me asking to be healed. I laid my hands on them and sometimes with startling results. There was no doubt that the peasants were whispering about me. And offerings of milk began to appear for me in strange places. I might come up a street alone and at the top of it find a pitcher of milk sitting there on the stones.
A certain fact also began to cause me pain. Perhaps I had never been baptized! Unless we can assume the terrified midwife and the ladies-in-waiting had done this. I don’t think so. And now as I brooded on this, as I began to try to remember all the details of the northland where I had been born and exiled, I realized that if I had not been baptized, then I could not have received Holy Orders, which meant that when I changed the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ it was nothing of the sort.
Indeed, nothing that I had done could bear fruit. I fell into a state of melancholia. I would talk to no one.
And then it became very plain to me that I must have imagined this birth in England! That nothing of that sort could truly have occurred! Donnelaith. I had never heard mention of a cathedral there, of monks of our Order. But of course for years Henry VIII had persecuted the Catholics. Only recently had Good Queen Mary restored the true church.
If my fancies were true, I had been by my own reckoning alive just over twenty years. Unless my lost childhood was just that-a history lost to the memory, buried experiences, something which I could not call back. But it didn’t seem so; and the more I brooded, the more everything about me began to look suspect to me, and
the more tormented I became.
Finally I decided I must know a woman. I must know if I was to that extent a man. I was burning to do it, of course. I always had been! And now I knew this was my excuse. Find out.
It was as if in a woman’s arms I would know if I was animal enough to have an immortal soul! I laughed at the contradiction, but it was there, and it was true. I wanted to be human, and had to commit a mortal sin to find out if I was.
I went into Florence, to one of the many brothels I knew, where I had in fact brought the sacraments to women when they were dying, and once gave Extreme Unction to a poor merchant who had the misfortune to die in a woman’s embrace. I had often visited this brothel in my priestly robes. It was not a shocking thing to do.
So I entered it now on a silent rampage. And the women came to greet me, “Gentle Father Ashlar!” for they talked to me always as if I were an idiot or a child.
It disgusted me for the first time. I walked out and into the piazza and down to the Arno and across the nearest bridge. It was crowded with shops, very busy, people were coming and going, and when I happened to look I saw a man watching me and knew again that it was a Dutchman just by the look of his clothes. I went towards him, but he fled into the crowd, and I couldn’t find him. He was gone in the snap of my fingers. Just gone.
I was then very weary, and finally I threw out my arms and I began to sing. I was on the middle of the bridge, and mad with fear and grief, trying to reconcile my memories with my devotion to Christ, and I began to sing. It wasn’t so unusual really, the streets were crowded with all kinds of distractions at such an hour in Florence. One crazed Franciscan swaying and singing was not peculiar at all.
Gradually some people took notice, as they are wont to do. They stopped their tasks and a little crowd gathered. I was rocking back and forth, holding myself with my arms and singing, and when I looked up, very lost in my song, I saw a beautiful woman staring at me, a woman with green eyes like those of the Franciscan priest in Donnelaith, and long fancy blond hair.
Then the most astonishing thing happened. This woman lowered her veil and walked away! And I realized that the face which had been peering at me was turned to the back of her body, as if her head was put backwards upon her neck. I was fascinated!
My passion was unbearable, but another even more evil excitement leapt in my heart. This is a monster like me.
I let the song die away, and spurned those who would have given me alms. Take them to the church, I said, to those who deserve them. And then I went after the woman, who had waited for me in a side street. Once again, she revealed the face, then walked off. Soon we were in a small alleyway. I was clearly staring at her back when she lifted her veil and revealed her face again.
Finally she spun round in a blur of black garments, silks, satins, velvet and jewels, and rapped hard upon the door. It was opened in the wall and as I rushed up to catch a glimpse of her before she disappeared through it, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside.
It was a narrow, crowded garden, like many a courtyard in Florence, with old peeling ocher walls, and bright flowers flourishing in the sheltered sun. Three other women sat there, together on a bench beneath a tree. All wore wide and beautiful skirts, rich sleeves, and had high bosoms which began to drive me mad. And the one who had brought me in, I saw now she was an ordinary woman! Her face was on the front of her body, like that of anyone else. It had all been some kind of illusion with the veils she pulled from her hair. Some little trick.
She confessed this to me, and this set them all to laughing so much I thought they would never stop.
I was dizzy. Suddenly these women were crowding about me and saying, “Father, take off your clothes. Come, stay with us in this garden.” And the blond one, who bore the famous name of Lucrezia, said that she had bound me with spells to make me come, but not to fear, they weren’t witches, rather their men were gone off to hunt in the country, and they would do as they pleased.
Their men gone off to hunt? This sounded bizarre. But I perceived the truth beneath it. These were whores, but whores free for the day, and I was the object of their desire.
“We are proud to initiate you, virgin child,” said the eldest of the women, who was as beautiful as all the rest. They drew me across the tiles and into the bedchamber. They took off my sandals and removed my robes; then they flung their dresses this way and that, crying out in jubilation, and they danced about me, naked as nymphs, singing some little song. It was all a joke to them! It was all a game. They were shocking the young Franciscan, who though he had a full beard still had the expression of a child.
But I was not shocked. Once more a strange knowing came to me of a time when all the world had done these things; the Garden of Delights it had been, with all romping naked, and playing and singing and dancing; and flowers all about us, and plenty of fruit to eat.
Then fear took hold of me. Gone, all that. Blackness.
I was meantime making like a satyr for these women, which they found very amusing, and which I could not help. At last they tumbled into the bed next to me, covering me with kisses, and I grasped the breasts of the closest woman, and began to suck tenaciously so that I made her cry in pain. The others planted kisses on my naked shoulders, my back, my organ, my chest.
In a twinkling I was back in the birth chamber in England, in the arms of my mother, knowing the fierce pleasure of drawing the milk savagely from her breast. I was drunk with the pleasure, and now it found its worst culmination in the organ, and I soon rode all the women, one after another, crying out in ecstasy, and then beginning with the first to take them all again.
It was now evening. The stars were visible above the courtyard. The roar of the city was dying away. I slept.
I was with my mother, only she was not hating me and crying in terror, but a long slender creature such as me, much too long to be a real woman, and stroking me with fingers which like mine were too long. Didn’t everyone see I was a monster like this woman? How could people be so easily fooled?
I drifted into dreams. I was in a mist, and people were crying, and sobbing, and men were rushing to and fro. It was a massacre. “Taltos!” Someone shouted it, and then I beheld in my dream the farmer from the field near Florence, and heard him whisper, “Taltos!” and I saw before me again a pitcher of milk.
Thirsty, I woke, and sat bolt upright as was my custom, and stared around me in the dark.
All the women were still, but with their eyes open. This struck me as horrid, horrid as the illusion that the woman’s face had been on the back of her head. I reached out to shake awake the blond woman, so rigid was her gaze. And I perceived the moment I touched her that she lay dead in a pool of her own blood. Indeed, all of them were dead, one on either side of me, and the three who lay on the floor. They were dead. And the bed was soaked with the blood and it stank of human people.
I rushed out into the courtyard in uncontrollable cowardice, and collapsed near the fountain, on my knees, trembling, unsure of what I had seen. But when I finally rose to my feet and returned, I saw it was true. These women were dead! I laid my hands on them repeatedly but there was no waking them! I couldn’t cure them of death!
I gathered up my robes, my sandals, dressed again and ran away.
How could these women have died? I remembered the words the Franciscan had said to me. “Never touch the flesh of a woman.”
It was the dead of night in Florence, but I managed to return to the monastery, and there I locked myself in my cell. When morning came, news of the deaths was all over Florence. A new form of plague had struck.
I did what I have always done at such trouble. I went home to Assisi, walking the whole way. The mild winter was coming, which is nevertheless a winter, and the journey was not easy. But I did not care. I knew someone was following me, a man on horseback, but I only caught glimpses of him from time to time. I was in despair.
As soon as I reached the monastery I prayed. I prayed to Francis to guide me and to help me; I pra
yed to the Blessed Virgin to forgive me for my sins with these women. I lay on the floor of the church, arms outstretched as priests do when they are ordained. I prayed for forgiveness and understanding, and I wept. I didn’t want to think my sin had killed these women.
I envisioned the Christ Child, and I became the small helpless baby, and I said, “Christ, succor me, Holy Mother the Church, succor me. What can I do on my own?”
I went to confession, to one of the oldest priests there.
He was Italian, but had only just come home from England, where many Protestants were now being put to death. We were rebuilding our monasteries in that land, sending priests back to serve the Catholics who had kept the faith during times of persecution.
I chose this priest because I wanted to confess all-my birth, my memories, the strange things said to me! But when I was kneeling in the confessional these things seemed the dreams of a madman! And it really did seem to me that I was a man only, and had had some proper childhood somewhere which had somehow been erased from my mind and heart.
I confessed only that I’d been with the women, that I had brought death to all four but did not know how.
My confessor laughed at me, softly, reassuringly. I had not killed the women. On the contrary, God had preserved me from the plague which had killed them. It was a sign of my special destiny. I should not think of it anymore. Many a priest has stumbled, taken to his bed a whore. The important thing was to be larger than that sin and that guilt, to carry on in the service of God.
“Don’t be full of pride, Ashlar. So you finally succumbed like everyone else. Put it behind you. You know now that it is nothing, this pleasure, and God has spared you from the plague for Himself.”
He told me that the time would come perhaps when I was to go to England, that England would need us as never before. “Queen Mary is dying,” he said. “If the crown goes to Elizabeth, the daughter of the witch,” he said, “there shall be terrible persecutions of the Catholics again.”