by Anne Rice
The Dutchman stared up at me and it seemed I saw hatred in him; pure hatred; or was it merely the thwarted will?
My brother and his men pulled me into the church.
Animal of sacrifice! Death to any ordinary woman…
My peace of mind was destroyed. The wonder of the journey was destroyed. I could have sworn that various persons in the Cathedral had seen this little drama and understood it, and that they were staring at me in a wary and cunning way. That they were almost amused. I went to receive Communion.
“Dear God, come into me, find me innocent and pure.”
The crowds of Paris are filled with bizarre figures. It was my imagination, surely, that those on the fringes stared at me, that the gypsies looked, and the deformed ones, those with humps and stunted legs. I closed my eyes and sang my songs in my head.
The next night, we put on plain clothes, and we sailed for England. The mist was thick over the sea. It was now very cold. I was entering the land of winter again, of low skies and dim sunshine, of eternal chill and mystery, the land of secrets, the land of terrible truths.
We made landfall four nights later, in Scotland, surreptitiously, for priests were being hunted by Elizabeth and burnt. We proceeded inland and up into the Highlands, and the winter came down around me like a spider’s web which had waited. It was as if the craggy mountains said to me, “Ah, we have you. You had your chance and now it’s gone.”
I could not stop thinking of the man from Amsterdam. But I had one purpose. I would reach Donnelaith and demand the truth from my father, not the legends and the prayers, but the reason for the fear I had seen in my mother and in others-the whole tale.
Thirty-six
LASHER’S STORY CONTINUES
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 eleva
ted, 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 i
n 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!”